


Keep the Home Fires Burning

by SylvanWitch



Category: Stargate: Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:59:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanted:  One stoic warrior type for casual sex, maybe more.  Must be passionate, occasionally submissive, always inscrutable, and patient with repression, military command protocol, and attempted martyrdom.  The series follows Season 2 throughout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Home Free

**Author's Note:**

> Ronon is practically a blank slate because of his relative newness to the show and his almost fanatical stoicism. Sheppard is a lot like Ronon, except that he pretends to more animation. What began as a simple character study has turned into a mad pursuit. Also, there are spoilers in this through Season 2's _Runner_.

Craters and waste and the dust of the dead. That's the vision that greeted them when they dialed Sateda.

Ronon spun, expression inscrutable, and left the room, trailing in his wake a wave of sorrow, palpable if only implied.

John's first instinct was to follow the man, but what do you say to someone who has just discovered that his whole world—literally—has been destroyed?

_Sorry about Sateda. Want to go a few rounds in the gym?_

Somehow, it lacked the right balance of masculine sympathy and guy-like support John was going for. Besides, he'd had his ass handed to him enough for one day, thank you very much. He rubbed absently at his bruised tailbone and looked to Elizabeth for some help.

She smiled a sad, harried little smile—one he was getting all too familiar with, he thought—and shrugged a little, as if to say, _Who knows?_

"What, no wise advice from our fearless leader?" he prodded gently, with not a single angle of the usual sharpness in his tone, as if to say, _Yeah, I got nothin' either._

"I don't exactly have the experience to deal with this, John. What do you say to someone who's just lost his home?"

John gave her a pointed look and glanced around them.

She let out a soft chuff of breath. "This is a little different. At least we know that home is still there, and even before the Daedalus came to the rescue, we had hope of returning to Earth someday. Sateda is—well you saw it, John. I've seen war zones before, of course, but nothing like that."

John gave her a sharp look just as her eyes brightened into recognition and locked on him. He knew what she was going to say before she even drew breath to speak.

"Oh, no. No, no, no, no—Afghanistan was bad, yeah, alright—I'll give you that. But it's not the same thing, Elizabeth, not the same thing at all."

"Maybe not, but your experience makes you a hell of a lot more qualified than I am. Besides...I think he likes you. He's still deciding about me."

As usual, she was uncomfortably right. John nodded and blew out a frustrated breath.

"Fine. But if he stops talking to everyone and starts acting all uncouth and weird, don't blame me." His rejoinder was wry, and Elizabeth smiled.

"Thank you, John. I won't forget it."

"Yeah, yeah. You owe me at least three weeks' worth of vacation time by now. You sure you want to run that tab up?"

Elizabeth gave him a genuine smile, then, and John exited, already calling the men assigned to guard Ronon to determine his location, arriving at Ronon's temporary quarters a few minutes later.

"I've got it from here, guys. Why don't you take a break, head down to the mess? I'll call you if I need you."

The two wasted no time offering echoed "Yes, sirs!" and walked briskly away.

John lifted his hand to knock, only to have the door whisk open with the soft hush of mystery hydraulics. Ronon was standing on the other side giving him a steady, unreadable look.

"You want something, Sheppard?" he asked shortly, clearly suggesting that John's answer should be in the negative.

"Walk with me," John responded, jerking his head down the corridor to his left.

Ronon glanced into the corridor, raised a single eyebrow upon discovering that his guard had been dismissed, and then gave a loose-shouldered shrug that might have been a shiver or could have been a stifled yawn—with him, everything was ambiguous. But he stepped out and moved to Sheppard's outside, slightly ahead of him, falling into guard position without a word.

John noted the big man's movement but said nothing, choosing rather to let him be at ease than to remind him of yet another thing that was different on Atlantis.

They walked in silence for a time, occasionally passing a scientist or off-duty soldier, once exchanging brief pleasantries—well, John was pleasant, Ronon mostly just stared off into the middle distance with no real expression on his face—with Dr. Beckett. Then they were on the balcony, the sea far below brushing rhythmically against the great city's silent sides, a suspiration that always reminded John of breathing, like the city slept deeply after her ordeal.

Finally far enough for discretion's sake—and for Ronon's own comfort, John supposed—they stopped at the railing and leaned, Ronon looking out over the vast expanse of water, corded forearms resting on the railing, John with his back to the sea, butt resting against the rail, ankles and arms crossed, the very picture of ease.

Just two guys out for a breath of fresh air, John thought, and then he snorted at how ridiculous this was. The man had just lost every hope he'd ever had of going home, and all John could do was rub his face in how far away from Sateda Ronon was. He wanted to say something comforting or profound or at the very least inspiring, but as he opened his mouth to try to string platitudes together, he heard himself say instead,

"Is there a sea on Sateda?"

The big man straightened suddenly, like he'd just been reminded that he was on duty. He kept his hands wrapped loosely around the railing, though, and John watched them, not Ronon's eyes, as the latter thought the question over.

"Yes," he said, voice void of any feeling, big hands clenched, knuckle-white, on the rail.

"Did you like to go there? Was it someplace you could go or was it far away?"

Ronon gave Sheppard a look, then, as though trying to calculate the angle of John's trajectory by the direction his questions seemed to be taking.

"When I was a kid we went there once or twice a year, I guess." He gave nothing away, not betraying with even a single tremor how he felt about his home world, but his hands flexed again, like they were remembering sand and saltwater or a hand in his own.

"What was it called, this beach town?"

"Locris," Ronon answered shortly. John watched his hands tighten and start to twist at the rail, wondering if the metal would bend. Sometimes it seemed Ronon was strong enough to do anything.

"Who'd you go with?"

Ronon's hands stilled on the rail, and John knew he'd pushed too hard.

He looked up to see Ronon scrutinizing him minutely, as though attempting to read his mind through the lines on his face and the way his pupils dilated.

"Why?" Ronon asked, not wasting words on the unanswerables, not _Why do you want to know?_ but _Why do you care?_

John shrugged elaborately, mimicking Ronon's earlier eyebrow. "No real reason, I guess. I was just wondering if we had anything in common. You know, swimming, sailing, surfing..."

"Surfing?" Ronon said, eyes a study in casual interest.

John smiled. "Yeah! You'd like it, I'll bet. We get these long wooden boards and balance on top of them to ride the waves. It's cool."

"Cool?" Ronon echoed, skepticism painting every letter.

"Well, you kinda have to see it," John waffled, still smiling.

There was a companionable silence for a little stretch and then Ronon surprised him by turning to prop a hip against the rail and look at John in profile next to him.

"What about you? You have a family?"

John would have crossed his arms defensively if they hadn't already been crossed. As it was, he shifted slightly in place and then turned around himself to face the sea, mindful of the cool rail beneath his own gripping fingers.

"No," John answered shortly, hoping the brevity would keep Ronon from prying.

"What happened to them?"

The rail was solid in John's hands, keeping him from falling back into the deep water of his past.

"They died," he said, his terseness a kind of shorthand for _Leave it alone._

"How?"

John took a breath in and looked out of the corner of his eye at Ronon, who leaned, a study in grace, bare arms crossed, muscles, even at rest, impressive in the starlight.

"You first," he challenged, tiring of the game but, as ever, unwilling to concede defeat.

It was Ronon's turn to shift until they were both standing, hips practically touching, identical stances leaning them out over the rushing water below, hands holding the railing for balance.

"I didn't know my father. My mother died three years after I joined up. No one knew what happened to her at first. One day, she wasn't feeling well, the next she was dead. Turns out there was something in the water supply, something the Wraith put there. She was the first, but she wasn't the last. We lost probably five hundred to that poison."

Ronon's history was delivered like a report to a superior, words clipped, details precise, nothing colored by feeling or opinion, like he was reporting the death of a stranger or the enemy's troop strength.

"I'm sorry," John said. And he was. Ronon gave a nod of acknowledgment.

"Did you have any brothers or sisters?"

"No. I was an accident as it was; when she got pregnant with me, her family disowned us, so I didn't really know any of them. Doesn't matter now, anyway," he added, and there was finally in his voice a shadow of feeling, like a sail just appearing on the horizon.

"My father, mother, and little sister were all killed in a car accident on the way home from my graduation from the Air Force Academy," John offered without prompting. He expelled it like a held breath and then waited.

Ronon gave a soft grunt and moved his left hand until it just touched John's right hand where it tightened on the rail.

"Sorry," Ronon said, gruffly, something unsaid caught in his throat, roughening his voice.

John waited a beat to see if Ronon's hand would move, and when he was sure that the bigger man's gesture hadn't been accidental, he shifted his own hand just enough to lay steady pressure along the whole long edge of Ronon's larger hand.

They didn't look at each other, and the silence and tension stretched until John thought he might have to do the manly thing and pretend to scratch or something like that just to extricate them from the apparent stalemate, neither wanting to commit to something more revelatory.

Then Ronon surprised him by saying, "On Sateda, they have this ritual for mourning the dead." He paused, as though the words were strange to him or he was unsure how to tell it. Then, "You get something that belonged to the person who died, and you take it to the place where the person was most alive or happiest—sometimes it's a school or a library or a park or something like that. And you leave it there. Just leave it, no note. Someone else, coming along, will recognize it as a remembrance and will take it, wondering who it belonged to and maybe cherishing it so it's passed on sometime in the future. It's called a Gift of the Dead because you can never know who owned it, but you remember them anyway, or you make up who they were and they live on, in a way, through the object."

It was the most that John had ever heard Ronon say, the most he'd probably had any opportunity or reason to say in a long, long time, and it seemed to wind him, or maybe wind him down. His shoulders slumped, a barely discernible concession to weariness, to the sadness that weighed them both down in their mutual moment of remembering, and John wanted to bring Ronon back from it, but he wasn't sure how.

The other man surprised him again, however, by moving his hand to cover John's own, which had unconsciously taken a death grip on the railing. Ronon didn't clutch, just laid the warm weight of his long palm against the back of John's hand, but it made the colonel hot in his belly, and he had to resist a powerful urge to line his lean body up against the promised heat of Ronon's height.

"Do you have something of your mom's?" John asked, pleased with himself that his voice didn't betray more of the tremors racing through him, an interior quaking wholly attributable to the feel of Ronon's hand on his own.

He looked up to catch the downward movement of Ronon's affirmative nod and to see the man's hand stray to a bright blue bead woven into a braid almost lost beneath the mass of his heavy, wild hair.

"You?" Ronon asked, shorthand clear to John, who was feeling like they might never leave this balcony, fused as they were, simple flesh to simple flesh.

"Yeah." The coins—three copper-bright pennies, 1944, 1945, and 1973, tumbled through his head as though through his fingers, and his free hand moved a little restlessly on the railing.

Ronon nodded again, something graceless in it this time, a tiny betrayal that he felt it too, the electric current humming through them both, grounded against the railing, running like a conduit into the sea below.

Neither made a move to retrieve the objects in question, standing frozen at the rail, hand more or less in hand, eyes fixed on the far horizon, empty as far as their eyes could see.

Then, in a voice tinged with impatience at his own foolishness, Ronon said, "This okay with you?" and laid a stronger pressure on John's trapped hand.

"Yes," he responded, his voice slipping as the tremors climbed his throat. "Yes." The second time more plea than affirmation.

They didn't wait to reach their quarters.

Neither Ronon's nor John's quarters would have worked anyway, given that the former was still a suspicious person and the latter was the ranking officer in a military far too capable of judgment on the matter of what they were about to do.

Instead, they stumbled, trembling hands now interlocked, into the first empty room they encountered after exiting the balcony, sparing only long enough glances to be sure the room was secure and not littered with potentially fatal technology before falling into one another with hungry mouths and hungry moans that left little room for misinterpretation.

John was, for a change, not surprised when Ronon pushed him back, hard, against the wall of the chamber and pinned him with the whole length of his impossibly long body. It drove the air from his body with a huffing sound that changed to a moan when Ronon ground himself against John's belly, the long, hard length of him evident even through the layers of their clothes. John's tongue drove deeper into Ronon's questing mouth, and the taller man tore his mouth away to lean his head against the wall, turn his lips to John's neck and let out a hot breath that wrung a strangled groan from the smaller man.

Not content to be passive in the pursuit of their mounting pleasure, John laid his hands flat against the wall and used the leverage to push his hips—and his hard length—against Ronon's thigh, an action rewarded by another fierce thrust by Ronon, who moved his lips to John's ear and growled, "Pants off, now" in a voice stripped to its essential nature by the need now naked in Ronon's face, into which John looked, though he did not require any real affirmation.

"You, too," he drawled, a slow smile creeping across his swollen lips as he reached for the leather laces that joined Ronon's pants at the front. The big man was a quick study, mimicking John's intentions, and soon they were both naked enough to wrap their fingers around the other's aching members.

Ronon swallowed a loud moan, and John said, "Don't—you don't have to be quiet here. No one can hear you."

The big man gave a ragged nod and took a firmer hold of John, moving his hand down the shaft to run his thumb delicately along the slit at its swollen end.

John's head made an audible thump as it hit the wall behind him, but it didn't stop him from speeding up his own motion on Ronon's shaft, and the latter bucked his hips and let loose a long, loud groan, ending in a softly exhaled, "Fuck, Sheppard." Knowing Ronon was close, John sped up still more, roughening his motion, trying not to think of how good Ronon's hand on his cock felt, trying not to feel the building pressure in his belly, trying not to thrust wildly into Ronon's skilled, hard hand.

Ronon threw his head back, and John leaned forward into Ronon's hand so that he could lick that long, lean column of flesh, so he could bite at Ronon's throat, and that undid the bigger man, who shouted a string of words in a tongue John did not know and came in a long, hot stream onto John's arm and belly.

The incredible heat, that vulnerable neck, the cry of pleasure took John apart, and he, too, came, feeling his knees give with the intensity of his orgasm, a hoarse bark of surprise ripped from him as he began to fall, Ronon's big hand catching him even as the other hand caught his hot seed, pulling John in against him so that their bellies touched, wet heat to wet heat, a slick gliding motion that wrung another moan from them both.

For long moments there was nothing but harsh breaths as they fought for control once again, and then Ronon bit John, hard, at the point of joining between his shoulder and neck, and John shuddered, utterly undone in Ronon's arms, and slid limply down the wall to rest on the floor, head down, arms dangling loosely over his bent knees, eyes closed, pants a wrecked mess around his thighs.

Ronon pulled his own up but did not bother to lace them and then slid down the wall to sit next to John so that every part of them that could touched. When John found the strength to look up, Ronon was running a lazy hand through the wet hair of his belly, the dark arrow glistening in the faint light afforded by the room's skylights.

John had to lick his lips twice before he could speak, and even then it was a hoarse shadow of his usual sound. "That was..." He had no more words now than he had had before, when he'd sought the other man out, so he let it go, gratified to see Ronon's wolfish grin and hear,

"Yeah, it was."

There were several things it occurred to John to ask Ronon then, things about his people and their military and if men did this kind of thing often where he had come from, but he didn't want to bring Ronon's home into this alien room that had become for them in a scant few moments theirs—not Earth, not Sateda, not even Atlantis, but home in a way that it could be for no others, ever.

"We should go," John observed, no real conviction in his voice.

"Okay," Ronon conceded, also making no move to get up.

"Maybe in a little while, when the crowd thins out," John added, and Ronon gave a little snort in response.

Silence of the companionable variety. Then,

"Can we do this again, or was this a one-time deal?" Ronon's tone was carefully void of opinion on the matter in question.

"Do you mean right now?" John asked, amusement evident.

"I think you overestimate my stamina, Sheppard," Ronon observed.

"Ah, a weakness in your training, then," John rejoined. "Guess we'll have to work on that until you've improved."

"Think you're man enough, Sheppard?"

John laughed, eyes bright with mischief. "Guess we'll find out, won't we?"

Ronon smiled again in a way that made things low in John's body tighten, made the base of his spine tingle. "Good," was all he said, but John knew what it meant.

They went their separate ways, John to his quarters, Ronon to his own, door once again bookended by soldiers, though John had promised that would soon cease. They slept alone, too, neither ready for the intimacy of sharing sleep, with its awful army of dreams.

But when Ronon exited his room the next morning, a free man, finally, after seven years of flight, he found a plain white envelope with his name in a lazy scrawl across it. Opening it, he found inside nothing but three small copper coins, which he placed almost reverently in his pocket, knowing what they were without being told.

As he started toward the mess hall, Ronon began to grin, hands busy on the braid in his hair, already imagining a return to their room—home, for a little while, at any rate, and free.

  
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.wraithbait.com/viewstory.php?sid=5540>  



	2. Home Free

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Mild spoilers for Season 2's _Condemned_.

"And what, exactly, were you trying to prove?" He hadn't meant it to sound so accusatory, hadn't expected his voice to sound like it was scraping through a tunnel of broken bricks.

Sheppard took a deep breath, arms rising and falling where they crossed over his chest. He realized that even his posture was confrontational, so he tried for a show of ease by leaning back against the familiar railing of what was quickly becoming "their" balcony.

He spared a thought for what they'd do once the official exploration of the city reached this quadrant and then let it go as Ronon advanced on him.

The big man stopped a foot away, close enough that Sheppard could see the muscle in Ronon's jaw moving, betraying his anger or hurt or humor—with Ronon you didn't know right away, might never know if you didn't keep pushing.

The memory of what had happened the last time John pushed Ronon came to him unbidden, then, and a frisson of naked desire zinged through him from throat to groin, forcing him once more to shift, trying to get comfortable in a place suddenly charged with a discomforting tension.

"Who's doing the talking here? Sheppard or John?"

The breath stilled in John's chest and his eyes lost focus, the tattle-tale of Ronon's racing pulse at his throat blurring as the colonel considered. Ronon had never used his first name before.

Was he angry because Ronon didn't immediately obey his order in that prison shack? Or was it because... . John didn't let himself finish the thought, didn't need to as his throat closed suddenly around what might be his heart, which seemed intent on pounding its way out his mouth.

He swallowed hard, so hard that he was sure Ronon heard it even over the rhythmic suspiration of the ocean far below them, twilight-bright waves throwing themselves recklessly against the great city's sleeping side.

He shook his head, tilted it back to stare at the clouds, underlit in alien orange, impossible pink, inky indigo bleeding from above as the sun set.

Then he blew out a frustrated breath and said, "Both. Ah, look, I don't know, okay? It's not like I make a habit of..." He gestured in the general direction of "their" room, a vague circular motion that made Ronon quirk up an eyebrow in what may have been amusement.

"Jacking off your fellow soldiers?" Ronon finished baldly, a chuckle fighting its way out of his rusty throat at the end.

"Well, yeah. That and..." Another hand gesture, this one apparently less illuminative, as Ronon's eyebrow indicated only confusion.

"What we're doing here now," John added, as if that explained everything.

"Which is?"

It occurred to John then that he'd had a valid reason to be angry when he'd gotten to the balcony to find Ronon waiting for him, as he'd perfunctorily commanded under his breath on their way out of the infirmary, post mandatory physicals. For the life of him, though, he couldn't remember what it was. Maybe it was the panic squirreling through his brain and snaking through his bowels, leaving an icy wake that chilled him till he actually shivered.

Ronon touched his arm at the motion, as if to see if John were okay, and John just shook his head, unable to speak for the cold that froze his breath in his lungs. It wasn't the air that was making him shake. His arm burned where Ronon's fingers lingered.

John released a nervous burst of laughter, and shook his head again. "How do you _do_ that?"

"Do what?"

"How do you turn the conversation around like that? You hardly talk!"

Ronon shrugged, that illimitable gesture that meant nothing...or everything. This time, it suggested to John that the Satedan's secret was in his silence, and it infuriated even as it intrigued him.

"Okay," John said, dropping his head to stare between his booted feet at the salt-worn tiles lining the balcony floor. "Okay," he repeated, something in his voice weary.

"Look, Sheppard, I'm not asking for a ring. I just want to know where you draw the line between commander and friend. Draw that line and I'll toe it."

John looked up at Ronon once more, really looked at him, at his dark eyes, shining in the last rays of the dying sun, at the glint of copper woven into his hair, where he'd managed to secret the pennies so that none would notice them but John, who knew where to look, at the pulse at his throat, slower now, as assured in its rhythm as the man in his words.

"It's that easy for you? Out there I'm your C.O., here I'm your 'friend'?" John used the last word carefully, rolling it in his mouth, tasting its texture, its hidden meanings.

Ronon's shrug was eloquent this time. "I'm a simple man, John. Tell me what you want of me and I'll do it... ."

John straightened in place, the big man's apparent submission driving a spike of lust up his spine, taking the breath from him in a mixture of surprise and desire.

His voice was shaking, but not with fear this time, and rough with something other than anger when he said, "So if I asked you to drop to your knees and take me in your mouth right now, you'd do it, no questions?"

Ronon stepped closer...six inches, four, until a deep breath would brush his broad chest against Sheppard's crossed arms, which he dropped now, wanting that contact, helpless against the rising heat between them.

"Who's asking?" The words were enunciated carefully, the deep voice climbing down the register and up Sheppard's spine at the same time, and he was a little ashamed to hear his breath actually catch in his throat as he tried to speak.

"I am," and it came out a hoarse whisper, nothing more than a breath on the breeze, but Ronon heard it, in fact captured the last of it in his mouth as he kissed John hungrily, devouring him, sucking his breath from his body and a moan from his throat and pulling John against him not with his hands but with the loss of gravity, John's center spiraling away with the sheer power of that single kiss.

When Ronon pulled away, John swayed, and two big hands bracketed his shoulders, parenthetical support pushing him back to lean against the railing.

Then the hands were gone, leaving only a searing heat where they'd been, and John felt fingers on his belly, pushing at his shirt and pulling on his belt even as he realized that the air was now empty where Ronon had once been standing. He looked down at the crown of Ronon's head, bent to the task of freeing him from his pants.

"God," John gasped, overcome by an intensity of feeling.

Ronon rewarded his response with a quick, darting kiss against his belly, the tongue swooping in to swirl about his navel, and John groaned, throwing his head back and spreading his hands out on the railing behind him for support. He wasn't sure his knees would hold him.

Ronon trailed his hot, wet tongue down the arrow of hair until he buried his nose in the thicket of dark curls around John's shaft, now wrapped in Ronon's big hand. His other hand was busy at the back of John's pants, pulling them lower and trailing down his tailbone and into the crevice, one improbably long finger questing and finding that sensitive iris even as his tongue made it first foray around John's swollen and weeping head.

John hissed, and Ronon made a sound that might have been a laugh or may have been a moan and then swallowed John's whole length down even as his finger penetrated him from behind.

John screamed, then, his head thrown back, throat a gleaming white arc in the twilight, face to the sky, and his knees betrayed him. He began to slide down the railing, but he was impaled on Ronon's finger, which pumped now in time to his bobbing head, the mouth impossibly hot around his shaft, and so the farther he sank, the deeper Ronon's finger probed until it touched that golden spot, and John screamed again.

Desperately, he grasped for something solid in a world gone liquid and hazy, and he found his hands fisted in Ronon's long, wild hair, felt the man moan around his cock as he was driven into Ronon's mouth by the big man's talented finger.

The orgasm robbed John utterly of voice, nothing coming from his open mouth but a strangled scream, as of some night-flying seabird seeking its way. The sky went black at the edges and he sucked in great, gasping, greedy breaths, vertigo robbing him of everything, his only center the head between his hands, the hair—improbably soft and thick—threaded through his sweat-slick fingers.

Somewhere in the process of John's slipping to the ground, Ronon removed his finger, but he kept his mouth on John's soft member, as though gentling it after its wild ride, and John came to himself again with the cold tile against his buttocks and Ronon's rough cheek against his thigh, hot breath against his nest of curls as the big man finally released John.

Ronon was curled around his lower body like a comma, his head the point of punctuation where John's shrinking exclamation rested. He loosened his fingers but did not release Ronon's head, and Ronon turned his nose into John's groin, into the pelvic crease where the skin was wet and sensitive, and he rooted there for a moment with an audible inhalation of musky scent.

John shuddered and let out a gusty breath.

"That was..."

"Yeah, it was," Ronon responded, following the formula, now familiar with this repetition.

John struggled to look down the length of his body to Ronon's resting head. "Did you...?" He found he didn't have the strength even to substitute a gesture for the obvious word.

Ronon laughed, a rolling basso that even in his sated state made things low in John's body clench, and he had his answer.

John fondled a braided penny, invisible now in the near dark of the new moon night, feeling its thin contour between his still shaking fingers.

"We can do this," he said finally, fingers finding Ronon's cheek, stroking that long bone downward toward the smiling mouth.

The responding nod was bristly friction on his inner thigh and John shuddered again.

"But maybe not out on the balcony like this," he added.

"Afraid we'll get caught," Ronon said, not really a question.

"That and I think I have a brush burn on my back from the railing."

Ronon's laugh was loud and long this time, colored by the knowing one man has when he's taken another in his mouth, held the source of that man's seed between his teeth, swallowed his life down.

"Lightweight," Ronon scoffed.

"Savage," John rejoined, a laugh following the word up his throat.

Ronon bit his inner thigh and growled and then pushed himself up to loom over John in the darkness, blotting out the stars with his bulk. The big man lowered himself over John in a push-up, kissing him deeply on the downward stroke and then breaking free on the upward, all graceful motion, rising up in the darkness to tower, like a constellation come to breathing life, over John, still prostrate on the balcony deck.

Ronon's hand came out of the darkness, offering.

John took it.

  
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.wraithbait.com/viewstory.php?sid=5540>  



	3. Home Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This is spoiler heavy for Season 2's _Trinity_. Also, I am taking deliberate liberties with Latin and a single word of Japanese, so if you're a purist, you may want to avert your eyes. *grins*

By the time Sheppard had a chance to speak to Ronon in private, the colonel was containing his anger with the kind of control he usually used to make precision bombing strikes or evacuate men under heavy artillery fire. He kept his hands at his sides, studiously unclenched, and made a conscious effort to loosen his teeth from the perpetual grimace they'd assumed since Teyla's personal report to him after the official debriefing on the mission to Belka had ended several hours before.

But as the door hushed closed behind them, Sheppard thought he could feel his fury expand to take up all the air in the room, and he locked eyes on Dex to see if the other man could sense it, too. As usual, the face was passive, unreadable. The Satedan could have been considering his breakfast choices or pondering the mysteries of the universe—Sheppard had stopped trying to guess a long while back.

The colonel stalked toward Dex, who had taken a seemingly casual pose, leaning on one hip against the ancient and apparently defunct control console that took up the center of the room. Dex had his arms crossed loosely, and his head was cocked as though he was listening to the distant sounds of the ocean, nearly inaudible beyond the heavy door that hid them from the city beyond their room.

Given its isolation and the privacy secured by Sheppard's relationship with Atlantis' technology, they were effectively cut off from anyone who could mediate—or referee—the conflict that was looming. It made Sheppard shiver in a not entirely unpleasant way, and that brought the hardness back to his jawline. He didn't want to enjoy this. They weren't here for that.

Dex was immobile, exhibiting the kind of deceptive stillness one sometimes saw in big predators poised, motionless and lethal, waiting for the right moment to strike.

If Sheppard recognized the warning in Dex's posture, he didn't seem to care, for in an instant he was violating the hell out of the bigger man's personal space, a technique that might have worked better had the colonel not had to look up—and up—to give the man a hard stare.

Eyes alight with an anger even he could not quite explain, Sheppard considered what to say. True, Ronon had endangered both himself and Teyla on the mission and had consequently all but destroyed her trust in Ronon. That would play hell with their team dynamics in the field and gave him ample reason to pull Ronon from his team. But if he were being honest with himself, Sheppard had to acknowledge that there was more to his fury than was strictly justified by even Ronon's most egregious behavior on Belka.

"Who was Kell?"

The question surprised both of them. Sheppard, for his part, had intended to berate the other man, not interrogate him.

Ronon shifted, dropping his arms and coming to a kind of casual attention, bunched muscles shifting as he spread his feet to shoulder width and raised his gaze to lock on something over John's head and about a million miles away.

"As I reported in the debriefing, Kell was the commander of my unit, my Task Master, during the war on Sateda. He betrayed us and sent thousands to their death to protect himself and his family. He deserved to die."

 _Name, rank, and serial number_ , Sheppard thought, hearing in the prepared blandness of Ronon's report a kind of desperate denial. As always, he'd have to push if he wanted anything approaching a real answer.

"Who was Kell to _you_?" The emphasis was a prodding finger, Sheppard knew. That it landed home was evident in the way a muscle twitched in Ronon's jaw. His eyes slid to Sheppard's for a second and then, as though recalling his mind from the depths of memory, he locked them once again on the middle distance.

"As I explained already, _Colonel_ Sheppard, Kell was my commanding officer in the field."

Apparently two could play the inflection game. John heard what Ronon didn't say, foremost that the Satedan was going to tell his current commanding officer only so much and no more about his former C.O. He couldn't have spoken more clearly had he said instead, _"Back the hell off."_

"I'm not asking as your C.O., Ronon. I'm asking as your..." He paused. _His what? Friend? Lover? Fuck buddy?_

"I'm asking as John, Ronon. As the guy you spend time with in this room." And here John could not resist the characteristic hand gesture he always offered, half-heartedly, when he tried to define them, this whatever-it-was they were doing.

This time when Ronon's eyes slid down again to John's, they stayed there, a steady weight adding to the already palpable tension in a room that had seemed larger the last time they had used it to snatch a rare few moments of privacy from the jaws of imminent disaster.

"Why?"

John shrugged, buying time. What could he tell Ronon that wouldn't sound foolish or desperate or—worse yet—jealous?

"It obviously bothers you, and I figure maybe you want to talk about it."

Ronon's snort held the kind of contempt Sheppard had heard before only from expensive horses and his own commanding officers. It was a snort that said, "I don't think so" and managed to imply both that the recipient's parentage was questionable and that his intellect was obviously flawed.

"Right. Not big on talking." John dropped his gaze to his booted feet, scuffing the floor once, twice, and then bringing his head back up. "I want to know, Ronon. This Kell guy was obviously important to you, and I want to know why. I'm curious, and—" Sheppard took a deep breath, blowing it out as he added, "And I need to know what he meant to you."

There. That was ambiguous enough, right?

"You think that Kell and I were fucking?"

Not ambiguous at all, then. _Fuck._

"Were you?" John kept his voice level, as though he were inquiring of the time or making an observation about the weather. But his heart had climbed up his throat and was beating against the back of it in a way that made him want to cough. How had they gotten to this moment?

"No."

Ronon wasn't going to give anything for free, John realized. It was obvious from the way the vein in his neck was visibly leaping, as though the tattoo caged some wild creature intent upon breaking free, that Ronon was affected by the line of questioning, but John had no idea why. He only knew he was treading on dangerous ground, if the bigger man's unconsciously clenched fists were any indication at all.

"Hey," John said softly, and Ronon's focus shifted so that they were suddenly intimately close, separated by only inches and intentions. "I'm just trying to understand here, you know?"

Ronon considered John for a long moment that stretched into several, time attenuating until John thought he might be breathing only once or twice a minute. Then the Satedan gave a curt nod and strode toward the door, brushing past John without looking at him.

"Outside," he growled, and it brooked no argument, not that John was going to argue. He was at the point of wondering if the room's walls had actually slid inward, so claustrophobic had the space become in the last few minutes.

The balcony was dark, a heavy cloud cover obscuring the planet's moon. No light reflected off the flat matte of the water below, and even the rhythmic suspiration of the city's surrounding sea seemed muted against the heavy, lowering sky. John gave a soft snort at the irony—even the outside world was closing them in, confining them to this time and place, this conflict neither of them wanted to win.

"So..." John said after some length of silence. Ronon was standing at the railing, facing the sea, back to John, his arms crossed. Everything about Ronon, from the rigid set of his shoulders to the stubborn jut of his chin, which John could see only by squinting against the darkness—everything screamed "Defend! Repel! Keep off!"

"My name means outcast in Satedan."

Matter-of-factly delivered, the statement left little room for response. And what do you say to that, anyway? _I'm named after the guy who baptized Jesus_ meant next to nothing in the context of Ronon's revelation, even leaving aside the hours of cultural exchange required to explain Jesus to the Satedan.

Figuring that saying nothing was the safest option, John kept quiet but moved to stand beside Ronon, leaning back against the railing so that he was facing the doors through which they'd come and the shadow-shrouded corridor beyond. _I've got your back,_ his posture said, though perhaps John didn't realize his body language. Whatever the case, Ronon seemed to come to a decision in that moment, for he relaxed his arms, dropping them to wrap his long fingers around the railing, tensing and releasing them to a rhythm only he could hear.

His voice was a growl crawling up from someplace dark and tight inside him, some cave where he kept his feelings, the ones that didn't involve victory or pleasure.

"On Sateda, a man was only as good as his father's name. You already know I was a bastard, and what that meant for me and my mother was that I would never amount to anything of value. The best I could hope for by the time I reached fourteen was some filthy laborer's job, where I did the lowest kind of work for the least amount of money. My mother took in wash, cleaned houses, whatever work was left to a woman with no husband and a mark on her name.

I helped out by stealing from the local shopkeepers. I never told her that's where the goods came from, of course. She thought I'd made friends with a local merchant and he was the one giving me the money. Looking back, I see now that she figured I was his...toy. I guess that should bother me, but I don't blame her—times were hard, and with the war, they got harder still.

Anyway, when I was thirteen I got caught stealing from the butcher's shop." Ronon's sudden bark of laughter startled John, and he turned an amazed look to catch the smile just dying from the other man's face.

"I had a steak down my shirt and a roast in my pants, and I was being tailed by six or seven curs, all growling at each other and snapping at me. It's a wonder I didn't get mauled to death. Anyway, the penalty for stealing on Sateda was the loss of the limb responsible—in this case, my right hand. Well, there was no way I was going to let them chop me up, so I started kicking and scratching, fighting any way I could. Even then, I was pretty big—bigger than a lot of grown men—and I did enough damage that the shopkeepers along the street called in the local beadle.

The beadle, Mackey, was this fat pig that stunk of ale, and he carried an enormous staff with a big knot on the end that he used to beat people into submission without having to expend too much effort. He came rolling up with a full head of steam and started to lay into me with that staff, and I just lost whatever reason I had left. I tore it out of his hands and gave back worse than he'd given me. Soon enough, he was sobbing on the ground, begging for me not to hurt him.

That's when Kell showed up. All of Sateda was under martial law by then, so as ranking military officer, he had the final say in anything that happened in the village, and he'd been attracted by the noise of the fight.

He took one look at me standing there with that huge staff, lording it over the beadle, and he started to laugh. He gave the butcher the money to pay for what I'd taken and told me to come with him. He had me take him to my house, where he made me wait outside while he talked to my mother. When he came out, he told me that they had decided I would join the army.

I told him I couldn't, that I didn't have a father, so there was no one to sponsor me. The army didn't take bastards. Kell shrugged and said he'd be my pater."

Ronon stopped suddenly, like he'd run out of breath or forgotten the next part of his tale, but one look at his face told John that the other man was just gathering himself, trying to put some distance between himself and the memory he was reliving. Ronon's hands were wrapped tightly around the railing and he was straight-armed, muscles taut, as though he could wrest the railing from its foundations by sheer force of his physical will.

John slid the inch or so further that it took to close the distance between his body and Ronon's, feeling all along his left arm the hard line of Ronon's own. At John's movement, Ronon dropped his head and released some of the tension in his frame.

"You don't have to say any more," John offered softly. "I think I understand now."

"How could you?" Ronon asked simply. It wasn't the kind of question that required an answer, so John let it go and waited.

"I found out when I got to camp that Kell was collecting us, the ronon, the outcasts, those of us who had never had a father, building a unit of young warriors under his protection and sponsorship. To be Pater meant taking responsibility for the lives and actions of the boys he named as his own. We were his Filii, his sons, and he was our Pater, our father. And they hated us for it, all the other men of the Satedan military, all those with real fathers. They thought our unit's very existence dishonored the name of the whole army. But Kell told us to prove them wrong, to show them that we could be just as good—better, even—than those so-called proper sons.

And we did. Within three years of formation, ours was the fiercest unit in the Satedan military, feared by friend and foe both. The Wraith began to target our battle insignia because they knew how dangerous we were. Other units learned to fall back when we engaged the enemy, for fear of being cut down or culled when the Wraith came for us.

We had so much success that Kell was given command of a platoon and then a brigade and then two, until he commanded twelve thousand soldiers. But he never forgot his Filii. We were given the choicest assignments, the most dangerous missions—we succeeded where all others failed.

Because he was our Pater." Ronon's voice dropped and he swallowed, a painful sound audible even over the low rush of the ocean below them. John could feel a shudder go through Ronon, then another, and then he tensed his hands around the railing and took a deep breath.

"We were Kell's Filii, and we would have gone into the heart of any hive for him. We would have stormed the Wraith homeworld had he asked us. So how could we say no when he ordered us to charge the advancing Wraith ground troops, to rush into the culling rays, to defend the shattered remains of the last bastion of our world? We thought he meant victory for us; we believed him when he said he had a plan to beat the enemy.

He was our Pater." The anguish in Ronon's low voice drove ice into John's belly and made him ache to suck the pain from Ronon's mouth like poison from a wound, but he held himself back, still and solid against the bigger man's now steadily shaking side.

"He was our Pater. How could he do that to us? How?" The last word was a broken whisper carried away and echoed again and again by the waves breaking against the city far below them.

John did touch Ronon then, putting his hand firmly against the bigger man's heaving chest and offering only that anchoring weight as the man struggled to gather the frayed ends of his control.

Without warning, Ronon turned toward John and gathered the smaller man to him, wrapping his long arms around him and pulling him tight against him, until John was pressed down the length of Ronon's body. John could feel Ronon's ragged breaths against his neck and the constant subtle shudder that passed through him with each exhalation. Wrapping his fingers in Ronon's long hair, feeling the coldness of copper coins brushing his knuckles, John brought the taller man's head up from where it rested on his shoulder.

Ronon's eyes were closed, his face a study in misery, the shadows of the dark night willing accomplices in hiding his pain.

John laid a soft kiss on one closed eye and then the other, following the line of Ronon's cheekbones downward to the corner of his mouth, where he allowed his tongue to dart out, asking permission.

Ronon's reaction was fierce and immediate as he forced his own tongue deep into John's mouth and brought his hands up to grip John's shoulders, fingers leaving indentations along John's collarbone. Ronon reversed them, pushing John against the railing until the smaller man had to bend backward, out over the water, to escape the bruising kiss.

"Hey," John said, not angry but firm. "Easy, Ronon. Take it easy."

But Ronon didn't want easy. He growled and shifted his grip from John's shoulders to his hips, pinning him so he could grind his hard length into Sheppard's trapped member. John let out a gasp, half pain, half surprised pleasure, and tried reason once more.

"We should move this indoors, you know. It's more—" He'd been going to say "private," but in the time it had taken him to form the words, Ronon's hand had dropped to John's zipper and begun the busy work of freeing his aching shaft.

"Ronon, look," John said around another gasp, this one incited by Ronon's rough, fast rhythm on his hard length.

"Stop!" John finally managed. Ronon stilled, hand frozen, breath a harsh counterpoint to John's own pounding heart, which filled his ears like thunder.

"You don't want this?" Ronon said, and in his voice there was something both fragile and lethal. The big man's hand squeezed meaningfully.

"Yes," John said tightly. "But not like this. Not here. I want to feel you against me...all of you." On the last, John's voice had gone dark and low, promising deeds done in darkness that would make Ronon beg.

The big man gentled his hold and then carefully tucked John away, leaving the zipper for the colonel to manage. Ronon moved away, eating the ground with his long strides, and disappeared through the corridor door before John could manage so much as a, "Wait up!"

John found Ronon naked in their room moments later, proving decisively that Ronon had superpowers, for no one could get out of leather pants that fast if he didn't possess some preternatural gift. John stopped in the still-open door to take in the sight of Ronon in all of his naked glory. Though there had been occasion in the field for him to see more of Ronon than what their furtive gropings usually allowed, he'd never had time to really study the man before.

He found that he was holding his breath, so John let it out slowly, allowing his eyes to trail up the length of the tall man, from the perfect arch of his long, broad feet to the shadowed cut of his pelvis where it joined his hip to the scar just above his left nipple and the one just above his right eye. The lights in the room were on the minimal setting he'd programmed weeks ago, and they cast shadows and lines over Ronon's form so that he seemed a creature cut out of the darkness, or like a trick of the light, here and then gone.

"God, Ronon," John whispered hoarsely, coming into the room and shedding his shirt even as the door hushed closed behind him. He made fast work of the rest of his clothes and stopped just beyond the circle of Ronon's personal space, strangely hesitant now that he was nude to violate what he'd so cavalierly disregarded just an hour before. _Why had he been angry then?_

"What do you want?" Ronon asked, and John winced at the coldness of the question, like Ronon was something to be used, to be ordered into battle and betrayed there in his last, desperate moments by the one who he thought had loved him like a son.

John stepped close and laid his hands against Ronon's chest, feeling the sure beat of the big man's heart against his palms. He brushed his little fingers lightly over the taut buds of Ronon's nipples and was rewarded with an indrawn breath.

"I want you to be here with me now. With _me_ , Ronon."

John looked up, waiting for Ronon to focus on him, and saw the recognition come into his eyes and the nod he gave, saying yes without words. Ronon's hands covered John's and pressed them to his chest.

"Okay." It was a promise, not a concession, but John found himself strangely unable to break the moment or move them forward into the present time, into this room, with the ghosts that had pressed close banished to the sea beyond.

"Okay," he echoed eventually, and slid his still-covered hands upward to cup Ronon's face. Ronon's hands moved to John's waist and pulled him gently toward him, spreading his legs and leaning back against the ancient console so that John had easier access to everything.

The first full contact of their bodies made them moan in mutual pleasure, and their breath was soon coming hot and fast as they found a rhythm, John driving his shaft against Ronon's own member, both of them slick with sweat and other things, the heady scent of musk rising from the heated seat of their frotting.

This time it was Ronon who said "Stop," a low growl of sound almost lost in the rush of heavy air and the beat of blood in John's ears. But when he pushed John back and turned around, bracing himself against the console, bending his back and spreading his legs wide, John knew it was really "Don't stop," and he moved in close to drive his shaft between Ronon's sweat-slick cheeks.

Ronon groaned, an animal sound that made John ache to take him hard and rough, without warning or foreplay, but he held himself back, gathering the ragged edges of his control.

"I don't have anything to..."

"Check my pants, left pocket," Ronon said, looking over his shoulder at John, desire and something else—amusement?—making his voice deeper than John had ever heard it. John quirked an eyebrow and Ronon gave his inimitable shrug, which John had no trouble translating this time.

John found the delicate pot of scented salve and palmed it open, smearing his fingers as he returned to Ronon's waiting form, body utterly open to him, beautiful in obeisance. Ronon's hair was a curtain around his face, but John knew how he looked when he was wanting, and he trailed a finger teasingly from the base of Ronon's spine down the tight cleft, stopping just above the clenched bud of flesh to rest his finger there and then withdraw.

"Sheppard," Ronon growled warningly, and John laughed, the laugh that went with the dark promise of his earlier words. He plunged a finger in, then, feeling the tightness fight and then give as Ronon pushed back against the intrusion. He brushed the sweet spot and Ronon shuddered, gasping out a word in the language he used when he was beyond translating to John's own tongue.

"More," the big man commanded, finding the familiar tongue again, and John added a second finger and then a third, pulling them out to the tips and plunging them back in, fucking him with his fingers until Ronon was rocking back against him, legs splayed, mouth spilling syllables foreign and guttural but definite in their meaning: _More_.

John pulled his fingers free only long enough to position himself and then push forward, reaching around even as he did so to wrap his hand around Ronon's shaft, not surprised to collide with Ronon's own hand, which had been busy while John had fingered him. John pulled out until only the tip of him was still inside, feeling the pulse beating there against his sensitive head, and then he thrust forward, seating himself deeply, and a groan tore from his throat at the heat and grasping tightness of it.

John gripped Ronon's hip with his free hand and used the leverage to thrust upward, driving Ronon into his hand even as he found that spot inside Ronon that made him shout with a wildness John had never heard before and that made him have to stop and take a deep breath to keep from coming on the spot.

John repeated his powerful thrust, and Ronon hissed, "Yes!" and then John did it a third time, until that was all there was, a single axle of pleasure from John's thrusting member through Ronon's body to his own straining shaft, which drove into John's hand again and again.

Ronon's hip was slick beneath his gripping hand, his hardness tight in John's curled fist, his passage impossibly tight and hot, and John threw his head back and cried out his release, neck muscles cording with the effort, eyes tight shut against the electric pleasure that seemed to surge up through Atlantis' floor and pin them both in place, trapped in a circuit of infinite release. Ronon's shout joined John's, his hot seed spilling over John's hand, making him moan again at the heady scent and the feel of it, what it meant that he had made Ronon come like this.

Ronon's long back made a welcome resting spot for John's head as he fell forward, weak-kneed and dizzy, and Ronon braced his elbows and forearms along the console's back to hold them both up. They panted, shaking and sharing what air they could manage through throats now tight with shouting.

John managed a ragged, "That was..."

And Ronon's muffled, "Yeah, it was" echoed back.

They were slow to unbend, slower still to dress, letting the strangely warm air of the room dry their sweat- slick bodies, sacrificing John's boxers to clean themselves—and the console—of obvious evidence of their activities.

They were half-dressed, John in his pants, searching for his socks, Ronon lacing up his leather, when the big man said, "Sheppard."

John stopped, looked at Ronon, at the man he'd just spent himself inside, and said, "Ronon," evenly, as though the man had not just re-established the distance between them with one word.

"Thank you."

John gave Ronon a searching look, trying to find in that impassive countenance some proof that they were different now than they had been before.

"It's John, remember? In this room, it's John." He waited until he saw Ronon nod. "And you're welcome."

Ronon busied himself with his vest and boots, John with his shirt and same, and then they were standing somewhat awkwardly, dressed and ready to face the lives they led outside this room, their ghost-free home. Were it not for the strong scent of sex in the air, they could have pretended nothing had ever happened.

"I won't betray you, Ronon," John said abruptly.

In the dim light, John saw Ronon fingering three spots of brightness in his hair. John pulled from his pocket the leather thong on which he kept the blue bead, rubbing his fingers almost absently over it and giving Ronon a long look.

"I know," Ronon finally answered.

"Good." A pause, then, "I guess we'd better be getting back. They're liable to have had some sort of crisis by now."

"Yeah. And you've got to get in your daily dose of self-sacrifice."

"Right. And what would we do without your willingness to protect us with your bare hands from all the dangerous food in the mess hall?"

Just before the door whooshed open to allow them egress, Ronon's left hand strayed to John's right buttocks and squeezed firmly, once.

"Pervert," John said without so much as faltering in his step.

"Prude," Ronon responded.

Their laughter followed them out of the room.

***FIN***

  
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.wraithbait.com/viewstory.php?sid=5540>  



	4. You Can't Go Home Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major spoilers for _The Lost Boys_ and minor spoilers for _The Hive_. Since each of these stories is episode-related, the series, in theory, will run as long as the show does. In this way, it's necessarily a perpetual Work-in-Progress. I hope you don't mind!

The room that had for a time now been their refuge was too small, too dark and cave-like for Sheppard, and he felt the trembling start inside of him, at first just a flutter, like a heavy thing some distance away that makes the ground quake the closer it gets. He swallowed and tried to ignore the hollow place in his stomach where his courage used to be and clenched his fists.

He'd be damned if he'd let some stupid, newly acquired phobia keep him out of the one place where Ronon and he could be truly alone together. _Good, that's good,_ he thought, feeling the anger start to burn away the hollowness. _Get pissed._ John thought of all the things he had to be angry about, the things he horded in a private stash of misery, away from the too-astute eyes always full of emotions he couldn't afford to acknowledge-- Elizabeth's concern, Beckett's sympathy, Heightmeyer's knowing.

He was angry at Ford and at himself for failing the kid, even if he knew that Aiden had been lost for a long time before they'd come to that cave. He was angry at the Wraith—but then, that was too easy, and it didn't feed the fire nearly enough. He wanted an all-consuming anger to replace the emptiness, the cold serpent of dread that curled through his belly always, it seemed. A face recurred, taking up the entire space of his vision, and he recoiled, actually taking a step back, and felt the icy water of fear douse whatever anger he'd manage to muster.

It was always this way. He sighed wearily, hearing it whisper around the edges of the too-silent, too-close space, and started again with the easiest anger, the one that came quickest to him, even more ready than his hatred of the Wraith.

The door slid open on its almost-silent track, and Ronon was standing there looking at him with nothing in his eyes at all, an impassivity that in the past had sparked John's annoyance but now was welcome, like sudden cover under heavy fire. He was the one person who didn't try to get through to John; of course, he hadn't tried then, either.

"Hey." He tried for casualness, and if he failed, it was only by a little, inches really, and Ronon ignored it.

Ronon's only answer was a quiet grunt, a single nod that swayed his heavy hair, a motion that John had always liked, even before he knew what the soft hair felt like fisted in his desperate grip.

Ronon stopped just inside the door, taking in John's stance—arms to his sides, hands clenched into tight fists, feet at shoulder width, head up. Ronon took two more steps, slower, and then stopped again.

"You want to hit me?" No sarcasm. The big man wasn't trying to be funny.

This was the first time they'd been alone since the whole thing had started.

John shook his head, blew out a breath and loosened his hands, and then deliberately turned his back to Ronon and moved to the wall opposite the door and let the wall guide him down to the floor, where he sat, knees up and apart, elbows resting on their upturned points, hands dangling between and head down. He tired fast lately—a side effect of the trauma, Heightmeyer kept asserting, but John hated it, almost more than...but he let that go. He couldn't afford to think of that in this room. He couldn't let that part of the world in here, or it would cease to be home for him, for them.

Ronon moved a few careful steps closer and then squatted, something John had seen him do for hours out in the field on recon missions. His thigh muscles bunched and smoothed, fluid and alive beneath the supple brown leather, and John found himself wanting to reach out and trace the line of one long muscle on Ronon's inner calf.

He held himself still, threaded his fingers together to stop the trembling that was growing again, a reverse earthquake. _Get a grip, Sheppard,_ he barked to himself. _It's a fucking room, not a cave._

_The air in the cave had smelled acrid with the accretion of bat shit, except in the cell-like depressions running off a central corridor behind the main room. These ran deep into the mountain and were damp, the walls slimy with wet moss, which channeled a steady trickle of water that the men collected and gave them to drink. It tasted of earth and something indefinable that had made John grit his teeth. Ford could dress it up any way he liked, but the place was a pit, the entrance a dark and fetid maw gaping from the green earth._

John brought his mind back from where it had wandered and found that his breath came out with an audible shudder. He shook his head, mouth twisting into the parody of a smile.

"I used to be better at this." His observation was safe enough, John supposed. Ronon could take it to mean any number of things, none of them relevant, all of them simple to dismiss.

"You've been raped before?" The word made John wince, and then he smirked at his own expense. Leave it to Ronon to ferret out the one meaning John had hoped to avoid.

"I wasn't _raped_ this time," John answered, giving the word just enough emphasis to make it clear that he wasn't afraid of it.

"Close enough."

"Close only counts in horseshoes and war," John intoned automatically. How many times had he heard his father say that when he was younger, when he'd screwed up a boxcar racer because he'd measured wrong, or when he'd solved the problem but didn't have the right work to show for it?

Ronon raised an eyebrow, letting it speak for him.

"Old Earth saying," John explained. "It means that 'close' doesn't count in this case."

Ronon shifted forward from the familiar squat and came toward John on all fours, which should have been ridiculous—Ronon was a grown man—and a big one. But there was something fluid and beautiful in the rise of his shoulders as he moved—and something predatory, John realized too late. He struggled to resist the urge to scramble away, for the wall was at his back and he was effectively trapped unless he moved immediately. His instincts were screaming at him to flee, but some of the courage he'd thought he'd lost chose that moment to reassert itself, and ice became iron in his belly.

He held Ronon's gaze, heart pounding, breath coming in fast pants out of fear and not desire, but he stayed put.

The big man stopped only inches away from crawling up between John's spread legs, stopped and watched Sheppard, face expressionless except for a heat in his eyes that in earlier times had made John's mouth water. Now, it made his throat go dry, until he had to clear it to speak, and he looked away, finally, unwilling to let Ronon see his fear.

"What are you doing?" John pretended his voice wasn't weak and shaking.

"Coming close," Ronon answered.

John's eyes narrowed and he felt an unexpected anger burst through him.

"Are you _fucking_ with me?" Every bit of his rage rested in that single word, a word that, like all the things they said and didn't say, had more meanings than one.

Ronon shook his head, sat back in a squat again. This put him further away once more, but that suddenly didn't matter to John, who was blind with fury.

"You think it's funny, what he did to me, that maybe I got what I had coming? You think I'm weak because I couldn't stop him? Because I can tell you this, Dex. You might be bigger and stronger than I am, but without the enzyme in you, you can't make me do anything I don't want to do."

John had stood up during his tirade and was towering over Ronon now, punctuating his words with a pointed finger only inches from Ronon's face. But John's whole body was shaking, his breath coming in heaving gasps, and he thought he'd rather be back in that tiny, dank cave antechamber than looking down into Ronon's no longer blank face.

What he saw there was pity—it had to be pity. And John didn't want Ronon's pity.

Without thinking, he lashed out, wanting to wipe that look from Ronon's eyes, wanting to hurt him, to drive him away, anything but to see his own undoing in Ronon's expression.

Ronon rocked back a little on his heels but didn't rise, didn't react, didn't try to stop the second blow that John landed, this one on his other cheek. He moved with the force and then stilled again, waiting, eyes fixed on John's, which weren't seeing Ronon at all.

_The second guard, whose name they never learned, had been watching John for days with an undisguised hunger that made John's skin itch and raised the hair on the back of his neck. On Day Two, during a rare moment of isolation from the others, Ronon had leaned in and muttered, "Watch the big one. He wants you." John had nodded, said, "I know. I'll be careful. But we might be able to use it," under his breath. Ronon had grunted, whether in approval or disgust, John hadn't known._

_And there'd been no time to ask, for at that moment Ford had walked in, sized up his former C.O. and the big guy plotting in one corner, and separated them, sending Ronon off to spar with the very man who'd been the subject of the brief discussion. Ford had taken care after that to see that Ronon and John were never allowed together out of earshot of one of his people, so John had had to hope that Ronon would understand what he had meant._

"You bastard," John cried, voice hoarse with strain, "Don't you dare pity me."

Ronon shook his head decisively and stood up, effectively removing whatever advantage their positions had given John. But Ronon didn't press the height difference, and he left his hands loose at his sides, eyes still steady on John's face.

"It's not pity."

"Then what is it? What did that look mean, exactly? God knows, there are so few expressions you choose to show, the ones you do let out must be something special."

John knew he was out of control, that the sense of his words was being lost to the onslaught of emotions he could neither define nor explain, but he couldn't seem to stop himself from speaking.

Ronon shrugged, looking uncomfortable and ill at ease for the first time since John had known him, and somehow that struck John as funny— _no, fucking hysterical,_ he corrected himself. The man was a walking faux pas, plowing through one social convention after another with nary a backward glance, but this—John's asking him to define a look—was making him uncomfortable. It was too rich for words!

John let out a ragged laugh that sounded suspiciously like a sob and took a staggering step back to lean against the wall for support.

Ronon let him laugh, face once again inscrutable, and when John's guffaws had receded, leaving him wet-faced and weak-kneed and once again sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, the big man joined him, sliding down beside him to sit in an almost identical pose—knees up, elbows propped on knees, eyes staring off toward the door as though searching for a sign of the future there.

Silence stretched for long moments, and the air became heavy again, the darkness an oppressive weight threatening to suffocate John in memories he'd rather not revisit.

_The man had cornered John one day while Ronon and Teyla were outside the cave, practicing with staffs and sticks. Rodney was, by that time, spouting technobabble, amped on the enzyme and buzzing with excitement despite himself. McKay could never resist new technology, and even Sheppard had to admit the Wraith dart was neat._

_John had been sitting at the table looking over the crude schematics of a hive ship that one of the others had made from memory. He was engrossed in trying to make out the chicken scratch label on a particular rear hatch, and he'd only realized the proximity of the guard when he'd felt the heat of the man's body against his back, only the width of the chair keeping them from touching._

_A heavy hand fell on his shoulder where it joined his neck, and a calloused thumb stroked upward, behind John's ear. He shivered despite himself, half in disgust, half in volitionless pleasure—that spot had always made him squirm._

_He was trying to figure out how to play this new development when the man drew him backward, chair and all and then wrenched him around and up to stand facing him. The guard's mouth descended, and John got a whiff of winey breath before the wet mouth was on him, the tongue forcing its way into his mouth. In his surprise, John tried to shout and got for his efforts only more tongue, until he thought its thickness might choke him. He struggled then, drawing his arms up and inside of the other man's, trying to break his grip on John's upper arms. The man's hands only tightened, and John knew then that he was in real trouble._

_His eyes darted around the room to take in what he could see of it, hoping against hope that Ronon would come storming in, somehow knowing that John was in trouble, but there was no one in the main room, and when the guard finally broke the kiss, it was only to spin John around and press him hard up against the table, so the wood was grinding into John's groin in an entirely unpleasant fashion. Something else, also unpleasant, was grinding into John's ass.  
"Hey, let's not be hasty, here," John said, trying to infuse his words with good-ol'-boy charm. "I usually like to go on a few dates first, you know? A little wine, a little conversation, maybe some flowers."_

_The big guard only grunted and kept grinding._

__Okay, _John thought._ If this is as bad as it gets, I can take it. As long as he keeps his pants on...

_John thought that perhaps he was going to come through this relatively unscathed, for immediately after he'd allowed himself to hope, the guard had eased up. John took a deep breath, surprised to realize he was shaking, and began to relax. The big guy was obviously done._

"Where were you?" John asked, trying to stave off the memory of how wrong he'd been in his assumptions—about everything.

Ronon said, "You know where I was. We've been over this. I didn't know, John." And there was a pleading apology there that John hated to hear from Ronon's stoic lips.

"It's not your fault, Ronon. Forget I said anything. There's no way you..."

"I should have known."

John's laugh was mirthless. "No one expects you to know everything, Ronon." Except, of course, they all had. They'd gotten used to Ronon's almost preternatural sense of danger. They'd taken for granted that he'd always know when something bad was about to happen.

"I counted the guards. I kept track of who was with you. I don't know how I could have overlooked that you were alone with him."

"It was the enzyme. Beckett said it clouds the higher functions. Your senses might have been sharper, but you weren't processing information the way you should have been. Besides, it isn't your job to always know what's going on, Ronon. It's my job. If anyone's to blame here, it's me."

"No," Ronon growled, and the sound made John shiver, made him want to move away.

_John had thought the guard was done, but then a hand crept around his neck, tightening on the nape, and the guard growled in his ear, "Move" and then pushed him forward with that crushing hand, guiding him down a dark tunnel and into a tiny, damp room that smelled of mildew and something else...something dead and unburied._

_The hand released him, and John spun, trying to strike out at the guard, but the guard was too close, and the blow was ineffectual. The guard only laughed and cuffed John with a glancing blow that stunned him and dropped him to his hands and knees._

_Fucking enzyme, he thought as he pushed himself up from where he'd fallen, hands sliding in the slime that coated the floor of the small, dark room._

_A boot caught him under the ribs and flipped him onto his back before he could get to his feet. Winded, he paused for a second to catch his breath, and the guard was on him, all groping hands and grunts of desire. Questing fingers found his fly and let the zipper down, dove into his boxers to bring out his member, which was flaccid, a clear indication of John's unwillingness._

_In case the guard was unclear about John's feelings, however, John shouted, "No!" directly into the man's ear and started to writhe and squirm, trying to buck the big man off of him. All the movement only seemed to encourage the guard, however, who laughed in John's ear and said, "I like it when you fight back."_

_He squeezed John's penis hard enough to hurt, and John had to bite back the groan that had climbed up his throat. The guard began to stroke John, and the hand felt wrong—calloused and cold, wet with the slime of the cave floor. This wasn't happening._

"I can't talk about this, Ronon. Not here, and not now."

"Okay." Ronon's voice was neutral. "Want to go out on the balcony, get some air?"

"I want you to kiss me," John said succinctly, moving to kneel between Ronon's knees and leaning in for a kiss that robbed Ronon of the surprised look he had been sporting.

The kiss was desperate, John's mouth devouring, and Ronon responded with a groan, hands coming up to cup the back of John's head and draw him in. He straightened his legs, allowing John to straddle them, and moved his hands to cup John's buttocks, sliding him firmly into place against his hardening shaft. Then he raised his knees again to support John's back and wrapped his arms around the smaller man, who felt fragile, something Ronon had never noticed before.

It bothered him, and so, to dispel and disprove the feeling, both, Ronon rolled them both to the side and lay his long body against John, bracing himself above the smaller man and looking down into his eyes, which were wide with something—panic or persistence, Ronon couldn't tell for sure.

_"Get off of me," John said clearly, enunciating each word. The man only laughed again and got busy with his own fly. Soon enough, John felt the guard's hardness against his own still uninterested member as the man began to rub against him and grunt in time to his thrusts. He forced his mouth onto John's, forced John's mouth open, and thrust mercilessly there, too, so that John was afraid that if he didn't concentrate he might suffocate for lack of air or gag on the vomit that threatened to fill his throat._

_John's hands, unfettered, pushed ineffectually at the man's shoulders. He tried to pry the man's fingers free of his penis, and when that didn't work, he took the man's greasy hair in two great handfuls and pulled as hard as he could. The man only grunted more loudly and sped up. John used every ounce of his military training, every move he'd learned in martial arts classes, every maneuver he'd gotten from dirty girls in playground games of contact four-square—anything at all that might dislodge his unwanted assailant._

_Nothing worked, and John felt with rising panic the guard's further intention as he scrambled up John's body and planted his pelvis on John's chest, his bobbing member only inches from his mouth. This time, John couldn't swallow the gag reflex, and he felt the bile rise. John turned his head, spewing onto the floor, feeling the hot, bitter liquid on his cheek, embarrassed, even in this terrible circumstance, by the stench of sick in the air._

_The guard struck him hard, a flat blow to the temple and right eye that left John reeling. But the vomit had turned the guard off to that particular pleasure, apparently, and he slid back down John's body, holding John against the ground with one impossibly strong arm, while with his other hand the guard pulled John's pants down to his knees and then used his own knee to push them still further down._

_John's ankles were effectively fettered by his pants as the guard's knee insinuated itself against his naked groin, spreading him wider, and when he finally felt the weight of the man's arm leave his chest, it was only to feel it replaced by the weight of the guard's pelvis against his own, pinning him._

_The guard's hands moved down John's legs, to wrap around the back of his knees and lift them high and wide, and John struck out with everything he had, battering the guard's face. But the guard only tucked his face against John's chest. A vibration there might have been the man's laugh._

_A blunt, heavy weight probed at John's entrance, and he stiffened, suddenly breathless with the certainty of what was about to happen. Frantically, he pounded at the neck and shoulders of the guard, to no avail, and then there was a hand at his throat._

_"Keep it up and I'll kill you," the guard said._

_John had the presence of mind to say, "Ford needs me. I'm the only pilot."_

_By then, however, the guard's other hand had gathered up the slick mire of the floor, for John felt a cold, probing finger at his hole, and he couldn't choke back the cry, then._

John didn't think he'd made a sound, but Ronon had stilled to stone above him.

"We don't have to do this now, John." Ronon's eyes were grave, but there was a softness in them John had never seen before, and it angered him even as warmth bloomed in the region of his heart.

"Why not? Because you're afraid I might break or because you feel guilty?"

Ronon pushed himself onto his knees and then sat back on his heels between John's legs. Something flashed through his eyes, momentary but obvious—frustration.

"Because..." Ronon stopped, gave a slight shake of his head, sending all of that hair into waving motion again. John wished it were brighter in the room so he could better read the big man's expression. Dim lights came to life, and Ronon quirked a characteristic eyebrow, still impressed by John's apparent love affair with Atlantis.

John tried again. "Why can't you be with me, Ronon? Is it because of what he did to me? Do you think that I'm—" John searched for a word that wouldn't make him feel sicker than he already did, but the only one that came to mind was the one that had been there since it had happened—"damaged?"

"No," Ronon said, decisively, and there was anger in his voice, banked but glowing hot. "I don't think you're damaged, Sheppard. I don't think any less of you for what happened. You were outmanned, outmaneuvered, and you did what you had to—you survived."

"Then what is it that's preventing this—us—whatever..." John made a half-hearted gesture that had something in it of the old familiar routine, and Ronon smiled a little to see it.

" _I_ don't think you're damaged," the Satedan enunciated. " _You_ do. And until you forgive yourself, it's never going to be just you and me here. I don't want him in this room with us, and I sure as hell don't want him between us like he is right now."

John felt suddenly vulnerable, stretched out on the cool Atlantis floor, looking up at Ronon, who knelt between his spread knees. He sat up, pulled himself backward, and swiveled around to rest against the wall. He bounced the back of his head against the wall once, twice, and squeezed his eyes shut, letting out a soft chuff of breath.

He opened his eyes after several minutes, rolling his head to his left to see Ronon, who was once again beside him. Without lifting his head away from the wall, John said, "I'm sorry."

Ronon shook his head, hard this time, and said, "Don't be. It's understandable. You just need more time, John."

"That's not what I meant."

John could feel the weight of Ronon's gaze. He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly through pursed lips, a soundless whistle. He thought incongruously of wolf-whistles and the women who'd walk back and forth before the base gates back in his early Earth days. Attraction had been much simpler, then, and it only took a whistle to make him one of the guys. Now...nothing was simple.

"I'm sorry for being angry with you and blaming you for what happened. Logically, I know it wasn't your fault. But when you left me there... _after_... I—"

_The intrusive finger had pushed past John's resistance and was starting to thrust when it was suddenly wrenched from his body with such brutal swiftness that John had to swallow a grunt of pain. He looked up from his prone position to see the guard flying backward, striking the corridor wall beyond the cell doorway. He slid down the wall in a loose-limbed pile, tumescence fading, and shook his head to clear it, looking up through unfocused eyes to see Ronon bearing down on him._

_The guard's shout of alarm was choked off by the hand that clamped around his throat and lifted him bodily from the ground, until his feet were kicking ineffectually against the cave wall._

_Inside the antechamber, John had scrambled to his feet and was trying to pull up his boxers and pants, but his hands were shaking so hard that he couldn't seem to work the zipper or the button, and he finally gave up, choosing instead to stumble unsteadily into the light of the hallway, unable to draw another breath in that dark room, whose smell he would always associate with fear and violation._

_The guard's face was an unnatural shade of red and his feet were starting to weaken in their ugly dance when John laid a filth-smeared hand on Ronon's arm and said, "Let him go, Ronon."_

_Ronon spared John the barest of glances and renewed his grip, squeezing harder. The guard's face was changing to blue, the eyes beneath his half-closed, fluttering lids showing only white._

_"Ronon, I'm ordering you to let him go." Though his voice was weak, tight with tension and rough with shock, John's words were still an order._

_Ronon's second look was more considering, but he released the man and stepped back, letting the guard fall to the floor in a boneless heap, flaccid cock flopping uselessly against his open fly._

_Then Ronon brushed by John and walked away, without a word, leaving John standing in the corridor, pants unfastened, face white, shoulders shaking, looking down at the guard who had just taken from him the one thing he'd never imagined losing._

"You ordered me to let him go. You made it clear that it was Sheppard and not John doing the talking."

Ronon shrugged, that ineluctable gesture, which, like so much in their relationship, meant everything and nothing. His voice was softer, though, when he added, "If I'd stayed another second, I'd have killed him for you, but I knew you didn't want that; I knew what it would do to all of us if I killed him. And—" Ronon seemed to gather himself, like what came next was the hardest thing he'd ever said,

"And if I'd stayed, I couldn't have helped but touch you."

"I couldn't have handled that," John admitted.

"You wouldn't have let me," Ronon rejoined.

"Maybe that's true." John shrugged, trying it out. He could see why Ronon liked it. "Anyway, I'm sorry."

"Yeah. So am I."

Ronon reached out his right hand and laid it gently over John's left, where it rested against his thigh. He didn't squeeze or thread his fingers through John's, only let it rest there, as he had the first time he'd ever touched John this way.

John took a shuddering breath and turned his hand over, so that Ronon's rested against his palm, and John was the one to curl his fingers through Ronon's. He looked at their linked hands, felt the heat travel up his arm and blossom in his chest, driving out the hollow chill that had been haunting him for weeks.

Then he looked up, right into Ronon's so-serious eyes, and willed the big man to see on his face all the things in his heart that he couldn't say out loud. He saw a corresponding look on Ronon's face, saw that what he'd mistaken for pity was really something far more complicated, and John smiled, the first genuine smile that he'd had in a long, long time.

"So...you wanna fool around?"

Ronon raised an eyebrow in inquiry. "Another old Earth saying?"

"Yeah."

"Does it mean what I think it means?"

"Depends. Do you think it means 'get naked and sweaty'?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Then yes, that's what it means."

"You need to teach me more of these sayings. They might come in handy someday."

"Planning to seduce McKay?"

Ronon's snort spoke volumes. Then, in that frank way of his, he added, "Did you fool around with that Wraith servant on the hive ship?"

"Well, you picked up that phrase pretty quick," John said, the smirk evident in his tone. "What do you think?" His tone here, too, made the answer equally evident; he was keeping things light.

But Ronon answered seriously, "I think you'd do what needed to be done if it meant keeping us all alive."

John was quiet for a minute. Then, "Thanks."

He shifted to his knees again and turned toward Ronon, who had mirrored John's motions. They were a breath apart, chests brushing on every inhaled breath.

"Hey," John said quietly.

"Yeah?" Ronon whispered, voice a basso rumble rising from his chest.

". . .Nothing. Never mind."

"Yeah, me too."

***FIN***

  
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.wraithbait.com/viewstory.php?sid=5540>  



	5. Home Away from Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are heavy spoilers here for Season 2's _Epiphany_.

Sheppard supposed he should be glad the cave wasn't damp, though he thought that perhaps it could be larger. With Ronon hard up against his right side and the ceiling of their shelter only a scant foot or so above their heads, John was more focused on not causing noise that might betray their precarious position than he was on how much the space felt or didn't feel like a certain other cave he'd rather not remember.

Ronon had wanted to be on the outside, nearest the mouth of the hole, but John had vetoed that with one wide-eyed glance at the confined space.

No, he couldn't do that, he didn't think. Ronon only nodded once and wriggled in on his back, somehow graceful despite the ridiculous requirements of the movement.

John had remembered then the souped-up '73 Mustang the guy down the street had been restoring when John was in high school, about how that guy had slid in and out of the narrow space between engine and ground with hardly a hitch, without even the benefit of one of those boards on wheels. He wondered how Ronon had come to the skill and had to choke back a snort at the incongruous image of the big Satedan beneath some alien space-wheels.

It gave a whole new meaning to "sweet ride," he thought, swallowing another laugh.

"You alright?" Ronon breathed into John's ear, sending a shiver through the colonel. John swallowed, gave a scant nod, and felt the warm weight of Ronon's hand on his thigh.

A squeeze, and then it was gone.

From beyond the cave mouth, a scuffling sound stilled both men to stone. John held his breath, hoping there were no dogs on this planet. Another scuff, louder— _closer_ , he thought—and then a cascade of shale kicked loose by whoever was standing directly above their hiding place.

John schooled his mind away from the irrational fear that the man's weight would send the cave roof crashing down upon them. He tried to remember how to breathe without gasping. Ronon's hand was back on his leg, grounding him in the present, distracting him.

An eternity of held breaths later, a second fall of stone was accompanied by the heavy thud of feet hitting the earth just beyond their cave entrance. They couldn't see the feet, nor the thick-soled military boots the Genii favored, for the mouth of the cave opening was narrower than the interior space and the floor of the cave sloped downward as it widened, but the scant light that had been filtering through the dusty air was broken by a shadow that was ominously constant—the man was standing right outside.

Ronon's hand remained where it was, steadying John, whose own hand had tightened on the handle of his standard issue knife. The P-90 was useless, any attempt at a shot risking ricochet in the tight quarters of the shallow cave, but the first hint of anyone attempting to breach the space would be met with several inches of cold and ready steel.

The shadow moved, the brush of boot-sole over bare earth nearly inaudible above the pounding of blood in John's ears. He thought of Poe's story and wondered if the man outside could hear his heartbeat; did the cave act as a natural amplifier? John shook himself mentally— _that's crazy, Sheppard. Get it together._

He wondered what was going through Ronon's head, Ronon who had hidden himself for seven years, who had hunted and been hunted just like this. _How could he have stood it for so long_ , John wondered. _Had there been only the hope of home to keep him alive?_ The bitter memory of Sateda's decimated wasteland came to John then, and his heart clenched in the combination of sorrow and anger he was coming to associate with Ronon's past.

More scuffing came from outside the cave mouth, this time moving away, and soon there was no object between the cave mouth and the dying light of the long day.

He risked a deep breath, heard Ronon exhale beside him.

"Think it's safe to crawl out?" he said low into Ronon's ear.

"No," Ronon breathed back, eliciting another shiver from John. "We wait until dark, then go."

"They'll be expecting us at the 'gate," John observed.

"So we don't go to the 'gate. We find a better place to hole up and wait for reinforcements. McKay and Teyla made it through okay."

John nodded. "As far as we know."

"If we don't hear from anyone in a few days' time, then we try to dial out. Either way, we're better off waiting for the Genii to get bored with waiting. It gives us an advantage."

John nodded again. "Right." Silence. Then, "How long until dark, do you figure?"

Ronon shrugged, a motion that John sensed more than saw, the bare whisper of Ronon's flesh against his own bringing to mind all sorts of really inappropriate images. Now was definitely not the time for that.

"Long enough..." Ronon let the words trail off suggestively.

Maybe there was time for that, after all.

"Do you really think this is the right time and place for this?" John hissed, feeling Ronon's hand moving north on his thigh.

"You do," Ronon observed wryly, his hand having discovered ample evidence of John's arousal.

John sucked in a heavy breath, trying to keep his hips still, afraid of scraping Ronon's knuckles against the roof of their impromptu shelter.

"Ronon, no," John said, low and firm. "Not here. Not now."

Ronon's hand stopped in its motion, moved away. "Okay," he said, voice devoid of inflection.

John felt strangely naked where Ronon's hand had been, the cold from its absence creeping up through his belly and chest.

"It's not you..." John began, and then he couldn't help the quiet sound that came from him, of self-deprecation and longing and a raft of other emotions he'd rather not consider. _I sound like the abused wife in some Lifetime movie_ , he thought, and then found himself wondering if things between lovers were the same on Sateda as back home on Earth. Was the big break-up speech a universal constant? He amused himself in attempting to factor for "can't we just be friends" but was interrupted by Ronon snorting bitterly beside him. Obviously, Sateda and Earth shared this formula, at least.

"Right," was all the big man said, but John heard more, heard accusation and recrimination and an anger Ronon rarely allowed anyone to see. He was good at public disdain, better at the graceful violence of all predators, but Ronon hid his anger, John had come to realize, an emotion too close to love and so reserved for personal things, things like what had happened between them since John had been recovered from the portal.

"I'm not saying never, Ronon. Just...not now. Not here. Leaving aside my whole... _thing_...about caves, there's the fact that we're being hunted by the Genii, who could find us any time. And I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have my dick swinging in the wind when that happens."

"It's not going to happen, Sheppard. I know what I'm doing. Trust me."

John didn't think he'd ever heard pleading in Ronon's voice before, and he wasn't sure he was hearing it now. It might be weariness.

"I do trust you, Ronon. It's just..."

"I tried to hold on, Sheppard, tried to get to you after you'd gone through. They wouldn't let me go after you, and then all I could do was send the supplies." Ronon's frustration was evident, heating the air in their confined space, suffocating John with the weight of what the other man left unsaid.

"I know you did your best, Ronon. That's not a question."

"Is it her?" The shift in Ronon's voice was measurable, from gruff to growl, sliding down the scale, making the hair on John's arms stand up. This was dangerous ground, and John suddenly longed for the Genii to interrupt them. Better their murderous intentions than the road that John had paved while waiting for his team to show up in Teer's village.

"No." John's voice was quiet, sincere, and he shifted slightly to try to look at Ronon, an impossibility given the narrow space. "No. When I saw you crossing that meadow, I forgot all about her, Ronon. I was so..." his voice faltered, thick with something neither of them acknowledged, "so fucking glad to see you. You have no idea."

As soon as he said it, John knew it was stupid. Of course Ronon had an idea of what it was like to be grateful to see others— _any_ others—to be rescued from abandonment and given new hope for the future.

"Sorry," John muttered, reaching out his right hand to rest it on Ronon's forearm, which was crossed over his midsection, muscles corded with tension. He was clenching his fists, John knew, something Ronon did when he was trying not to lash out, trying to grasp physically what was intangible, uncontrollable.

Ronon shrugged, an eloquent gesture beneath John's hand.

"I mean that I'm sorry for everything, Ronon. For doubting that you'd come, for being angry with you for taking so long, for what happened with Teer."

"Is it because of the cave? Because of what I let him do to you on—"

"No!" John's denial was far louder than the low tones they'd been using, and both stilled once more and listened hard, as though they could sense the pricking up of ears at great distance from their hiding place.

After interminable minutes, Ronon relaxed infinitesimally beside him and John breathed again.

"No, Ronon, that's not it. How many times are we going to go over this? Of course I trust you."

"But not enough to believe I'd come for you."

John sighed audibly and shifted a little, moving his hand to Ronon's hip, splaying his fingers out in the crease, rubbing absently at the smooth leather.

"I was there for months, Ronon. After awhile, I started to give up hope. And I thought I was going to die at the hands of that beast, and no one in the village had my six, and Teer just offered me... . She was beautiful, Ronon, you know—but you're... ." John's voice was halting, high and thin somehow, and he couldn't seem to stop his fingers from shaking in their minute exploration of Ronon's hip, of that subtle dip where belly melted toward bone. He took a breath to steady himself.

"I thought she'd help me forget what I'd lost, but it didn't work. It didn't work, Ronon, and she knew it. She stopped me before we even got to the good part, put her hand on my shoulder and pushed me off of her, sat up, and then looked at me and said, 'I am not the one with whom you wish to share this, but he is coming, John. Your faith in him is stronger than your belief that you can ascend. Put your faith in him to good use, then, and wait out this night, for tomorrow there is hope born anew.' And she got dressed and left. She left, Ronon, and all I felt was this hollow relief that she had been stronger than I was."

He came to a stop, sucking in air through a throat suddenly constricted by feelings he couldn't voice. He felt Ronon's hand ghost over his own and then settle there, solid and real.

"I'm sorry I wasn't stronger, Ronon."

Ronon picked up John's hand, threaded his fingers through, squeezed them, and then settled them there on his hip once again.

They said nothing for a long while.

"It's getting dark," Ronon observed, almost conversationally.

"Think we should try it?"

"Yeah," Ronon said, carefully untangling his fingers from John's own.

John led with the P-90 this time, knowing that once it cleared the cave's mouth, he could use it for whatever waited. He hated the sliding sound his clothes made against the earth, the muffled thud of his boots, the way his breath went loud in his ears as he cleared the cave mouth on his back with only inches to spare.

He breathed free air and swept the air in a wide arc, leading with the P-90, looking for anything anomalous, anything that didn't belong in the sparse undergrowth atop the ridge where they had found a break in the earth that could hide them from pursuit. Nothing. He slid the rest of the way out, less careful of making noise, and rolled to his knees and then into a crouch, grateful to be upright once again, though he felt uncovered, like a target waiting to be struck.

Ronon was behind him between one heartbeat and the next, gun drawn, making the same parabola in the air opposite John's own position.

"Clear," Ronon said, just another night noise against the increasing buzz and hum of insects and the light wind that rustled the treetops below their ridgeline.

"How far are we from the 'gate, do you think?" John asked, though he knew the answer already.

"Two, maybe two and a quarter clicks," Ronon responded. John still found it jarring to hear Earth parlance from Ronon's alien mouth. It felt...forbidden. John forestalled a shiver by moving away from the ridge, keeping low to the earth so as not to provide a silhouette, an action Ronon echoed. When they'd cleared the ridge and made it into the treeline, they halted.

"Which way?" John asked, deferring to the other man's far more impressive survival skills.

"Think they'll send a jumper?" Ronon countered, considering.

"Yeah, probably cloaked. Do some recon. I don't think Teyla had time to figure out how many men are on the ground here."

Ronon nodded, then, "We should circle north around the 'gate, come up on its east side to within two miles. Close enough to be picked up in the early sensor sweeps, but far enough away to escape the Genii's notice."

John motioned with his P-90 for Ronon to lead the way.

The journey took the better part of the night. Twice they had to go to ground, hugging the earth for cover as Genii squads moved past so close that they could smell the smoke in their clothes from their cooking fires. The second time, a slight Genii woman holding a gun that looked obscene in her tiny hands stopped mere inches from John's head, and John was sure that they'd been made. But she was only checking in with her superior, who ordered her squad to backtrack toward the 'gate, which was immediately south of them now. "You're too far out," the man barked, sounding harried. John smiled darkly.

It was just before sunrise, the air dense with grey waiting and still like death, when Ronon motioned that John should stop. He pointed to a rise of rocks just to the southeast. "That's as good a spot as any. Make sure your life-signs detector works; don't want some funky metal in the rocks to block the sensors on the jumper."

John smiled. "You're really good at this."

Ronon's face was obscured by his hair and by the sheltering shadows of pre-dawn, but John was pretty sure the other man smiled.

And then, "Funky?"

Ronon did smile this time, for John heard it in his answer. "Lorne used it to describe a move I made during training last week. He told me it meant something that was off or not quite right."

John nodded, checking the detector as they moved closer to the outcropping. Here, the forest floor had been pierced by granite thrust upward by incredible force thousands of years ago. The rocks were old, smooth, rounded tops indicating long exposure. Thick moss in the crevices and lush fern in the lower cracks showed where the forest was trying to reclaim its lost hold over the stone.

"No funky metals," John reported, pocketing the detector.

Ronon was already climbing the largest of the rocks, bigger than a boxcar and at least forty feet high. Eons ago, some titanic geological event had sundered the rock, leaving a deep cleft starting with a narrow crevasse at about twenty feet up that ran horizontally, a V laid flat and which widened out to a space large enough for the two men to comfortably sit, backs to a flaking rock wall. From below, nothing but the black slit of the crack could be seen, and then only on one side.

"You hungry?" John asked, reaching for his pack. Except for PowerBars and water, they'd had nothing to eat since they'd come through the gate yesterday afternoon.

"Yeah," Ronon said, reaching for the MRE John offered. Ronon, as usual, had left his pack on the jumper, but John, both by training and inclination, always carried a light pack. With care, they could make what John had last between them until Atlantis sent its rescue team.

In retrospect, perhaps they shouldn't have tried to fit this world in before calling it a day. It was the third world they'd explored yesterday, the first two having quickly proven uninviting and empty of life. This one had seemed promising on first blush, and they'd thought to make a quick sweep, see if they could bring back some hopeful news to Atlantis. Lured by the promising energy readings Rodney had been excitedly proclaiming, they'd landed in a clearing about a half-click from the gate and gotten out to investigate.

That's when they'd been jumped. They'd split up, John and Ronon leading the bulk of the Genii force away from the jumper and into the woods, engaging them in a running firefight while Rodney and Teyla hightailed it back to the cloaked jumper.

They'd watched from a ridge as Rodney had made a shaky take-off, and they were already turning to dive free of a burst of gunfire when they heard the familiar whoosh of the stargate. They were sure their teammates had made it through.

"They made it," Ronon said, startling John not so much with his words as by the import of them. Sometimes they were too much alike.

"I know," said John, nodding firmly. Meal finished, he cleaned up the site and then laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back, watching a bird high in the sky circling and circling. It was alone, so he figured it for a raptor and not a scavenger.

Ronon caught John's focus, gave it a glance. "Hunting."

"Why not?" John said, voice wry. It said, _Everyone else is._

"You don't like it." John didn't have to ask what Ronon meant by "it." By now the shorthand was second nature between them.

"No. Never have. I like being the one in control."

"Yeah, I got that," Ronon said, something of a smile starting in his tone.

John turned his head to look at Ronon's profile. "And you do—like it? I mean, you couldn't have liked being a runner all those years."

Ronon shrugged, shook his head. His hair was held back by a leather thong, and John missed its heavy swing, searched the tied dreads for a sign of copper.

"I got used to it. I didn't like it, but there were times when it was okay. And I wasn't always being hunted, you know. I did the hunting a lot."

"You miss it." It wasn't a question. John knew Ronon's answer, had watched the big man's frustration in mission briefings with Elizabeth. She almost always chose the safer route, the one that meant the least danger for her people, even if it also meant they'd get less out of the endeavor.

"Sometimes," Ronon conceded. "But I like having a place to sleep at night, like having meals that don't have to be caught and cooked. And there are other benefits." On the last, the big man's voice had deepened, gone rough and low, and John felt it to his core.

"Now's a better time," he observed casually, not looking at Ronon.

"Okay," Ronon said, and this time that single word was anything but neutral, filled as it was with dark promise.

Ronon's hand was moving up John's thigh, inching inexorably toward its inevitable goal, when John's hand stopped him.

"No. Not this way. Come here," and he tugged on Ronon's hand, bringing the big man up and around to his knees, facing John.

"Kiss me," John said, releasing Ronon's hand and laying his own on Ronon's shoulders, pulling him in. "Kiss me," he repeated, a little breathlessly, a little urgently.

Ronon obliged with a low laugh that tightened things in John's belly and made him think of being devoured alive, an image soon supported by Ronon's searing kiss, all tongue and teeth and gasping shared breaths. When he finally pulled back, both were panting.

They stared at each other for a long moment, John reading in Ronon's eyes everything that neither of them might ever say about this thing that they had started and could not seem to finish. There was no finishing, John guessed, only ending, sudden and violent and final in a way that even getting pulled through a portal could never be.

Ronon traced a searing trail down John's cheek, starting at the corner of his eye and lingering at the joining of jaw and neck. John moaned and Ronon nipped at the point of his throat where the sound vibrated, then licked the subtle wound until John squirmed and breathed, "God, Ronon" and reached his hands around to free Ronon's hair, into which he promptly fisted his hands, guiding the bigger man's journey down his throat toward his collarbone, before which point it was necessarily stalled by John's jacket and tee shirt.

"Off," Ronon growled, leaning back to follow his own advice, leaving only the bone necklace for covering. John obeyed, pushed Ronon further back toward the narrow V of the crevasse opening, and laid his jacket down in the soft silt and accumulated leaves, lying back to watch the bigger man loom above him on his knees.

Ronon reached down between them and unfastened John's pants, lowered the zipper with teasing tardiness, and then laced his long fingers in the waistband of pants and shorts, both, to strip them from John's lean body, stopping only long enough to remove John's boots and socks.

John's desire was evident in the shaft jutting hard from his body, a sight Ronon drank down, eyes dark with desire. He trailed a hand down John's body, lingering along the line of hair that ran from his navel to his groin, pausing to investigate the flutter in John's abdomen where Ronon's fingers tickled him, finally coming to rest and wrap warmly around John's member.

"Yes," John breathed, voice a shaking flutter against the daylight sky. Ronon smiled, a wide, knowing smile, the kind of smile reserved for those who know you intimately, who have seen you naked and more than naked, who are sure of what comes next.

Ronon's hand moved languidly, in no hurry, while with his other he worked at the laces of his leather pants, making quick and practiced work of them before interrupting his exploration of John's aching want to remove them, along with his boots.

Once naked, Ronon waited, saying nothing, letting John look.

"Come here," John said, finally, when he had taken his fill of looking. He thought he might never see enough of Ronon naked, but the wanting caught him up and he had to ask. John knew Ronon wouldn't come otherwise, wouldn't take from John that careful control.

Ronon stretched his naked length over John, lowered himself between John's raised knees until he took his weight on his own knees, then sank further in a slow, slow motion, muscles sliding and shifting in his shoulders, so that their shafts matched and moved against each other with every hitching breath.

John thrust upward to let Ronon know he was ready, and Ronon let John have his weight a little, feeling John's hand snake between them and wrap around them both. Ronon groaned, threw his head back, exposing his long throat, which John leaned up to nip and suck.

Ronon thrust again, unable to stop the shudder running through him as John bit his nipple and then dragged his tongue over the rough bud. John's hips thrust upward, catching Ronon's rhythm, matching his shallow thrusts, a babble of whispered words spilling from his lips as his free hand traced its way to the round power of Ronon's ass.

Ronon gasped, "John," as though surprised, and thrust harder, and John traced the line of Ronon's crevice, dipping his fingers into the space made slick with sweat, tracing a line around the puckered opening of Ronon's body. John didn't have the reach to delve deeper from this angle, but it didn't seem to matter to Ronon, who was repeating John's name in a rough chant that matched the motion of their bodies.

The friction of their members, slick now with an accretion of fluid, and the musk of their mating rose to John's nostrils and he groaned, throwing his head back, eyes wide open as he came and came and came, Ronon's name drawn long and loud from his mouth as the pleasure swept over and through him.

Ronon made a strangled sound and thrust a last time, neck corded with the effort to be quiet, teeth clenched against the shout that clawed its way up from his belly.

Harsh pants echoed off the walls of the crevasse as they came down, Ronon lowering his shaking weight onto his elbows so that he could card his fingers through John's wild hair, John mirroring Ronon's moves by threading his fingers through Ronon's thick locks.

Ronon laughed, the heat of it gusting over John's face, and John smiled up into Ronon's eyes.

"What's so funny?"

"I was just thinking that if you'd been with me on the run from the Wraith, I wouldn't have lasted seven days, much less seven years." He paused, and John had the sense to keep quiet.

"You make me weak," Ronon said in a rough whisper after what seemed an eternity.

"And that's a bad thing." John agreed. "I know. Me, too," he added after a minute.

Their breathing was starting to even out, but Ronon hadn't moved; he still covered John from head to toes, bodies sticky where they joined, heady odors of sex heavy in the air around them.

"What do we do about it?" Ronon asked, voice as lost as John had been among the soon-to-be-ascended.

"Well, stopping doesn't seem to work," he noted dryly, tightening his fingers in Ronon's hair enough to bring the man's head down until their foreheads touched.

"No," Ronon agreed, and it was a ghost of sound as from John's own lips, so close were they.

"Then I guess we keep doing what we're doing and see what happens."

"No wonder you spend so much time nearly dying," Ronon said, a laugh leaving his mouth for John's, which had opened to protest. Instead, he kissed Ronon, hard, biting his lower lip as he pulled away.

"I'll have you know that almost dying takes a lot of planning," John groused as Ronon began to disentangle them, pushing himself up and away from John. "I have to figure out where the threat is, time it just right, aim for the most likely means of killing myself, and then expect the miraculous save at the very end. It's like the 'Hail Mary' of life-threatening events!"

Ronon paused in his attempt to clean himself with one of John's emergency socks to quirk an eyebrow upward. "You mean like that game you showed me?"

"Yes, exactly like that! That play only works if you time everything just right." John was by this time pulling on his pants, commando-style, having sacrificed his shorts for the cause of cleanliness.

"John, that play worked only because of pure luck."

"See, this is why I'm the commanding officer. You clearly have no appreciation for the finer points of strategizing."

Ronon's expression was eloquent.

"Okay...look, I'll try to plan a little more and almost die a little less. Will that make you happy?"

Ronon smiled a little, busying himself with the laces of his pants, but said nothing.

"Well?" John demanded, pushing Ronon, face suddenly serious.

Ronon must have heard the shift in John's tone, for his fingers stilled and he looked up. Then he closed the gap between them in one stride and pushed John back against the crevasse wall, holding him tightly at the shoulders between his powerful hands.

He looked down at John, something fierce and indefinable chasing across his face, mouth a firm line, hands clenching tighter and then tighter still, until John knew Ronon wanted to fist them to stop whatever threatened to burst the bonds of his stoic control.

"Tell me," John whispered gently.

"Tell me," he repeated a moment later, a command this time and not a request.

"You make me happy," Ronon said, so quietly John might not have heard it had he not been staring at Ronon's lips, willing them to form words. "And that scares me."

"Because you're used to everything that makes you happy being taken from you violently," John asked, his query rhetorical. He already knew the why; what he wanted to know was the whether—whether or not Ronon could get beyond his fear.

"Because I let you walk through that portal, into that cave, off of the jumper... ."

"You don't _let_ me do anything, Ronon. I'm in charge here, remember?" And it might have been ridiculous for anyone observing to hear John rejoin thus, given that Ronon had John pinned to the crevasse wall, framed in a bruising grip. Except that it worked. Ronon gentled his grip, let his hands slide down John's arms until they were wrapped in loose cuffs around the smaller man's wrists.

John looked at the bracelets of Ronon's long fingers, thought about how the man could crush the bones between them if he wanted to, knew that Ronon never would.

"You said once that if I drew the line, you'd toe it."

Ronon nodded his acknowledgement.

"Then here it is, Ronon. When I'm Sheppard, I'm not John."

"Doesn't matter if you die which one of you you're playing," Ronon said, voice harsh.

"I could say the same thing, Ronon. If I order you into an ambush and you're killed, I can't very well separate myself from the man who made the mistake."

"So how do you live with it?" There was in Ronon's voice something of the forlorn boy he must once have been. He wanted answers John— _no one_ —could give.

"I remember that we have a job to do, and I do it, and I try to leave out the part about how happy you make me."

"Does it work?"

John gave Ronon a steady look, and when Ronon got it, he nodded to John.

John repeated, "When I'm Sheppard, I'm not John."

"Even when we fuck in the field," Ronon noted, looking around them pointedly.

"Well...okay, I admit, the rules might need a little refining. Point is, you're not any more responsible for me than you are for Teyla or Rodney or anyone else we bring off world with us."

"Yeah, but they don't fuck me like a freight train."

This startled a barking laugh from John. "Where did you hear that?"

Ronon smirked, pleased with John's reaction. "I think it's called 'rap'?"

John shook his head. "You really are a savage," he observed. "Remind me to introduce you to the Man in Black when we get back to Atlantis."

"Someone from the _Daedalus_?"

John snorted, choking a little on the water he'd just tipped into his mouth from his canteen.

"Johnny Cash."

"I can't keep you people straight."

"He's a singer from Earth, Ronon. Trust me, you'll like him."

What Ronon might have been about to say was interrupted by a welcome voice emanating from the radio in John's pack.

"Colonel Sheppard, this is jumper three, do you read?"

John picked up the radio and drawled, "It's about time you guys got here. Do you have a reading on us?"

"Affirmative. Two clicks due east of the gate, on an elevation. There's a clearing another quarter-click to the south-southeast. We can pick you up there."

"Copy that, jumper three. We'll be there in five."

"Jumper three out."

Working with the ease of long familiarity, they secured John's pack, picked up their weapons, and erased all signs of their visit to the rock, sans some biological indicators neither thought especially useful for detection purposes. The climb down was easy, the short jog through the woods uneventful, and soon they were safely ensconced in the rear of the jumper, having been greeted by Teyla's relieved smile.

As they disembarked back in the jumper bay and walked together toward Elizabeth's office for their debriefing, John said, without looking at Ronon, "We good?"

"Yeah, we're good."

"You want to meet me in our room later, maybe finish what we started?"

"I thought we finished just fine," Ronon remarked, causing John to miss a step.

"I meant the conversation," he gritted under his breath.

"So did I."

***FIN***

  
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.wraithbait.com/viewstory.php?sid=5540>  



	6. At Home in His Skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story takes place during the events of Season 2's _Critical Mass_. Believe it or not, there is no sex to speak of in this tale, though I gave it an R to cover the language. My purpose in writing this piece was to peel away the layers of civility and humanity that John and Ronon wear, to reveal the brutality that war requires, and to consider what that might mean for John and Ronon's burgeoning relationship.

The first time it happened, they were across the conference table from each other, McKay in mid-sentence, something about using binary signifiers to make the search process more efficient, and John dismissed it as his imagination. Ronon's impassivity was rapidly achieving legendary status in Atlantis, though the Satedan had only been there a few months. _Hell_ , John thought to himself, _even when we're alone, he doesn't let me see it._ He turned his attention back to McKay's technobabble, pleased to find that once again Rodney's panic was working for them, that big physicist's brain running on fear-induced adrenaline.

The second time, John couldn't shrug it off, couldn't pretend he hadn't seen the look on Ronon's face, and John wondered if there was something wrong. And then he snorted, an inappropriately humorous sound, given that he was standing in the main control room at the time and he was pretty sure Cadman had just made a grave declaration about the kind of explosive force the Stargate could achieve if detonated like a bomb. But really, that only proved his point: if Ronon was starting to crack, then they must be in real trouble.

He'd seen the Satedan stare down the death that had come in a variety of ugly guises in the months that the big man had been on his team, and each time Ronon had had the same expression that John imagined the other man might wear when picking out his day's wardrobe or considering the composition of his evening meal.

 _Well, shit, maybe we are going to die,_ he thought.

He managed to swallow back another laugh, this one perhaps slightly more hysterical than the last, and schooled his face into a look of serious concern and competence. Whatever he murmured to Cadman must have done the trick, for suddenly the lieutenant was once again intent upon her monitor and John was pivoting to leave the control room and make yet another frustratingly useless sweep of an apparently bomb-free city. The scientists were handling the real action this time— _again_ , John corrected internally—and so he'd put the marines on patrol, searching for any clue that might lead them to a saboteur. It kept them—and him—busy and prevented the creeping worry from getting a stranglehold on any of them.

The third time, the look was unmistakable, and John could neither dismiss nor ignore it. They were passing in a corridor, John running full-out, the desperation in McKay's tone—something about a possible bomb in one of the labs on level four—still ringing in his comm-linked ear, Ronon's confident strides eating the ground steadily in the opposite direction, toward some unknown goal, until the bigger man stepped into John's path. John's irresistible force met Ronon's immoveable object with an audible "oomph" that knocked the wind out of both of them and left John a little dizzy...and a lot angry.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Dex?" It was more a gasp than a growl, but his meaning was clear: _Get the fuck out of my way._ _**Now!**_

For seconds they probably didn't have to waste, Ronon did nothing, simply looked at John, and John's anger escalated, for of all of them, it was the Satedan who had to know that this was life or death. Had Ronon lived too long loose of the chain of command to remember what it meant to need haste? No, it couldn't be that. He knew Ronon. _Knew him_. There had to be a reason.

"Oh," the single word, soft-spoken, left his mouth at the same instant that John recognized the look that Ronon was giving him now and had been giving him since the warning had come from Stargate Command via the _Daedalus_ : fear, not for himself but for his commanding officer, and something else, something unnamed still, that traveled between them silent and invisible but transparent to the two, if to no one else.

John nodded once in their usual wordless way, and Ronon relaxed so subtly that only John, who had come to read the rise of Ronon's shoulders, the set of his spine, like a map of an unknown continent, recognized it for what it was. Then the man was gone, and John was once more running dead out for the lab, McKay snapping in his ear, "If you're done with your little tete a tete, do you think you could find room in your busy social calendar to report on the status of the purported bomb before we're all blown sky high?"

John cursed the life signs detectors and McKay's perspicacity fluently as he cautiously removed the mysterious silver canister's screws and lifted the lid, breath sighing out of him as he found inside not the workings of a bomb, as the pair of patrolling marines had feared, but a sealed test tube held in stasis by a brilliant blue light that emitted the same radiance as other Ancient devices around the city. John didn't know what the test tube held and wasn't really anxious to find out, even assuming they survived the current crisis. Things in labs tended to try to kill them as surely as any Wraith had.

Even while he was reporting the false alarm to Elizabeth, a voice in the deepest part of his brain, the part that still wanted to hunt for food and kill things that threatened those he'd die to protect, was screaming a warning not unlike Atlantis' own claxons, this one saying not _You're about to die a horrific and painful death_ but _Does he know, does he know, does he know?_ in an insidious litany.

But what McKay knew or didn't know would have to wait, John supposed, as he heard Weir's strained voice say, "Colonel Sheppard, report to the conference room immediately," where he learned that two Wraith cruisers were on their way and Atlantis was in danger of discovery. If they reconnected the ZPM to power the city's cloak, they risked an explosive overload that would reduce the city to the very flotsam the Wraith were coming to investigate.

"The city that Murphy built," he muttered as he made his way out of the conference room with a new set to his jaw and a glitter in his eyes that suggested he might shoot the first person who got in his way.

Naturally, it was Ronon. Again.

This time, John could only muster a weary, "What now?" He didn't have it in him to be gentle or kind or reassuring. He was on his way to help evacuate the Athosians from the mainland and was thinking about how tired Teyla's people must be of running away. As he always did when he thought of the Athosians, he felt responsible for their original exposure to the Wraith—even if those orders had been on Sumner's head—and then the burden of guilt for waking the Wraith. The latter was an unpleasantly familiar feeling, a cold steel collar that choked him at the throat and made his chest tight with wanting to breathe.

"Come with me." Ronon's voice was low, tense, and John found himself falling into step automatically, alarmed by the tone and the way that Ronon wasn't looking directly at him. His steps faltered as Ronon disappeared into a dark doorway, the room beyond obscured by the narrow door and Ronon's bulk.

 _This is Ronon_ , John thought, biting back his recent instinct to avoid dark, confined spaces. So he entered the room, reluctant but trying not to show it, and Ronon closed the door behind him, closed him in a space that felt too close, too narrow and small and altogether too familiar, except that there was no smell, John noticed, and _This is Ronon_.

"What?" John said, and if it was terse he was to be forgiven. They were about to either blow themselves skyward, scattering their fragmentary selves over Atlantis' rolling ocean, or expose themselves to the Wraith, who would bring everything they had down on the essentially defenseless city.

"Nothing," Ronon said, "Only..." and John felt the ghost of warm breath over his cheek just before the press of lips on his own, so he wasn't startled by the action, just its implications. He drew away, took a step out of Ronon's range, felt a wall at his back and tried not to think: run.

"Ronon, we don't have _time_ for this," John snapped, attempting to move around Ronon to the door behind him.

"Might be the only time we have left," Ronon observed, and the nothing in his voice is what caught John's attention and made him stop trying to figure a way around or through the bigger man. He knew enough of his teammate, enough of his friend, enough of his... _lover_ , John supposed. _If I can do it, I should at least be able to think it, right?_ He knew Ronon well enough to know that when his voice was that careful, that devoid of feeling, that was when the Satedan was feeling something that he wanted to hide.

John's hand found Ronon's face in the dark, followed the line of his cheek down to the lush lips with their rough cover, traced his chin and his throat, until he stopped the caress at Ronon's chest, spreading his fingers wide over the region of the man's heart, which jumped and raced under his touch. His breath caught when he realized that Ronon's heart moved for him, and John had to draw his hand away. It was too much, and he couldn't afford to think about it or he might not be able to function.

"I can't," he whispered, and it was a harsh sound in the small space, and there was pleading in it, too, and John hated himself for it, knew he'd betrayed everything he was feeling and couldn't voice.

"Okay." Ronon's rumble echoed around them. "So long as you know."

John held his breath. He was tempted to push the other just that one inch further, to ask, "Know what?" and by making it casual diffuse the tension between them or by making it serious force the other to say what they both knew was so. He wasn't sure he could survive either outcome intact, not and walk through the peril of the hours to come.

"I know," was all he said. It seemed the safest course, though he knew it was a cop-out.

"Okay," Ronon said again, and he moved aside.

In the light that came in from the corridor as John opened the door, he caught a glimpse of Ronon's face, cragged as it was by the sharp lines of light and shadow, and what he saw there made him stop, door still open and unheeded, as he reached up and ran his fingers through Ronon's thick hair, felt the cold copper against his palm in the instant before the kiss came and focused his feeling on his lips alone.

A flash of heat, a hint of tongue at his parted lips, a single sigh of breath, and he was out the door and running once more.

The last time John saw the look was just before the big man stepped into the room that held the suspected saboteur, Kavanagh, and John knew that this time Ronon's fear was borne of the line he was about to cross for John, for Elizabeth, for them all, not because he was incapable of torturing another man for information—there had been an eager light in Ronon's eyes that John didn't care to consider just then—but because he knew, with the instinct of someone who had lived his life under command, that this was the kind of order that would change them all, not just Ronon but John and Elizabeth and all of them. John wanted to stop Ronon, to say, "I rescind the order. We'll find another way," except that they were out of time and there was no other way and goddamn it, this was war, and in war there were almost no limits to what was—not acceptable, never acceptable, but—necessary, John thought. This is necessary. And he took in a sharp breath through his nose and tried to clear his head of everything but their need for information.

He thought, irrationally, incongruously, that if he concentrated he might sense the Wraith cruisers entering the planet's orbit, feel the enemy's impassive and hungry regard as they took in the sight of the city on their sensors, spread below them like the gateway to a new paradise, Earth and all her people a vast distance away unaware that they were in danger of becoming prey to the avid hunger of the Wraith.

Sheppard squared his shoulders, drew himself up, a slender line across which the Wraith would never step, and nodded to Ronon as he passed by him and into the interrogation room, Ronon who himself had become a predator far more formidable than the Wraith could ever be, sinews and muscles, yes, and wrapped around strong bone, but also heart and passion and a thousand other things that might be stained forever by what his commanding officer—Sheppard— _John_ —had just asked him to do.

The look that Ronon gave him said, _Will this make me a monster to you?_

John gave him a steady look, unashamed of the man or his imminent violence or even his eagerness to enact that violence, surprised to find in himself no answering shame at having made the initial suggestion nor given the order that took Ronon into the room where the violence would be unleashed by slow degrees, etching itself into the flesh of another human being.

Ronon's tight nod might have said only "Okay" to the marines standing guard around the interrogation room, but to John it said, "Yes, I will do this for you, and we will not suffer for it."

But when John saw the bloodless body, the scientist prone on the interrogation room floor after only a few minutes— _it couldn't have been more than three minutes,_ John thought, a kind of panic rising in him that he hadn't been clear in his order, or that Ronon had been too ready, too much the right kind of weapon for this job, after all—he couldn't help the note of accusation, of astonished fear.

And when Ronon assured him that he'd done nothing to the man, hadn't even laid a hand on him, John's response was equal parts relief and regret—relief that Kavanagh had proven himself every bit the coward John had always known he was, regret that he'd allowed Ronon to hear his doubt, the sudden onset of remorse that had taken him right there at the end.

So it might have been Ronon's anger at John that had caused him to attack Caldwell with such vigor, or maybe it was seeing John hurt by the Goa'uld that had infected the _Daedalus'_ stalwart captain. Whatever the case, John admitted—to himself, at any rate—a hint of satisfaction at seeing Caldwell, or the thing that wore Caldwell's face, bested by Ronon's strength and speed. And were he being honest, he'd recognize, too, a secret gloating that it was Caldwell, by-the-book, stick-up-his-ass Caldwell, played like a puppet by the worm, dropped like a doll by Ronon, and finally at the mercy of Sheppard himself.

 _Ronon's not the only one who's eager_ , John realized, accepted, as he stared down at the prostrate form of Atlantis' other colonel.

That final look, he and Ronon shared, and it was not a look of fear but recognition—that they were both men, both monsters: graceful and violent, predators and protectors, soldiers and lovers...men, at home in their own skins and together, come what might.

  
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.wraithbait.com/viewstory.php?sid=5540>  



	7. Home Is Where You Hang Your Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story contains very mild spoilers for Season 2's _Grace Under Pressure_ and _The Tower_.

"So Teyla says you're quite the revolutionary," John gibed, dodging to avoid a botanist with her hands full of blossoming tomato plants. The tart green odor of the plant wafted through the air, and he breathed deeply, remembering home with a pang that he'd thought would have subsided by now.

They were still in the inhabited and well-traveled parts of the city, running easy, slow enough that Sheppard still had breath to speak. Ronon would always take it easy on him where others could see, deferring to John's rank as commanding officer, but once out beyond the limits of regular human incursion, he'd open up into a ground-eating stride that pushed John to the very edge of his own limits—and sometimes beyond. Breathless, legs numb with exhaustion, John would stop, watching Ronon ghost away from him, like a Wraith illusion, here and then gone.

Ronon, knowing the drill—they talked of public things in public places—snorted disdainfully. "That wasn't a revolution—for that you need more and bigger guns. That was just a bunch of farmers getting pissed off."

John raised an eyebrow, muttered, "We've got to keep you away from Malifano. You're starting to sound like a longshoreman."

"Longshoreman?" Ronon asked, voice even, and John thought, _He isn't even breathing hard, damn him._

"On Earth, it's a guy who loads and unloads seagoing freight ships for a living. They're kind of well known for their colorful language."

"On Sateda we'd call them freightsmen. And they have the same vocabulary."

John laughed. "Guess some things are universal." They parted around a tall man pushing a cart full of unidentifiable Ancient parts, and when they rejoined, Ronon said,

"So I hear she was pretty hot."

John misstepped and had to do a little jig to keep from careening off of a wall. He could almost feel Ronon's grin as he lengthened his stride to catch up to the Satedan, who hadn't faltered.

 _So it's guy talk_ , John thought, catching the eye of Sergeant Estebal, who was trying not to smirk. While he appreciated Ronon's obvious attempt to prove John's masculinity to any and all within hearing—and there went Ilsa Regsdorf, who worked in anthropology, eyes carefully downcast, lips twitching suspiciously—John wasn't necessarily thrilled with providing grist for Atlantis' vigorous gossip mill.

Still, he didn't want to ignore the question entirely, for he sensed that Ronon's casual tone belied his true interest in the subject. He knew that the big man wasn't jealous of Mara; he had believed John when the colonel had explained that nothing had happened. But apparently, Ronon was still curious about John's purported intergalactic powers of seduction.

 _Rodney is going to pay for explaining the Kirk reference to Ronon_ , John thought testily, trying to find a graceful way out of saying any more about his purported romantic life while passing the most populated areas of Atlantis: gym, cafeteria, hydroponic gardens.

"She was attractive," he drawled, trying for the same kind of casual tone in which the question had been offered.

"If you like 'em slutty," Ronon added, and this time John _did_ graze the wall with his shoulder as he tried not to fall over his own feet.

"Okay, that's it. We are going to have a talk about what is and is not appropriate language in public," John observed, once again having to catch up with Ronon's retreating form.

Ronon's only response was to speed up. They'd reached the causeway that separated the populated city from the parts that were still in the process of being explored. There were no teams out that day, John knew, having done the duty roster himself for the week. In fact, all non-essential personnel were on light duty for a few days, Elizabeth and John having agreed that everyone could use a little R and R.

In fact, McKay—having lost his argument with Elizabeth regarding his essentiality—had shuttled a mixed group of civilians and off-duty soldiers over to the mainland to get up an impromptu game of co-ed soccer, a game that almost everyone could agree on. They had been teaching Halling and some of the other Athosians how to play, and the Atlantis team was hoping to have their first real scrimmage game.

John had declined an invitation to watch the game on the grounds of having to catch up on paperwork, but he'd only done the minimum required to salve his conscience before changing into his workout gear and seeking Ronon out for a run.

 _It's not exactly Oahu_ , John thought, _but it'll do._

He was pushing it now, breath coming faster, legs pumping, feet pounding out a fast beat. He'd learned the hard way that lengthening his stride in an attempt to compensate for Ronon's longer legs had only led to cramps and pulled muscles, so he was working on moving faster with each stride instead of farther.

Ronon was still leaving him in the dust...or what passed for dust on Atlantis. The city was surprisingly clean for all it was ten thousand years dormant.

He heard the telltale whoosh of a door ahead and saw Ronon move out onto one of the long piers that jutted out like the arm of a starfish into the sea. This pier usually held the _Daedalus_ , but it was on its long journey back to Earth, and the space seemed empty without the ship's boxy bulk.

Ronon was well ahead of him now, and John slowed his pace, knowing he couldn't catch the bigger man. Instead, he fell into the easy rhythm of his cool-down, content to watch Ronon's lithe form as he moved away, looking forward to watching him on the return journey, too.

John admired the way Ronon moved, economy of motion combined with an animal grace that left him breathless, and not because he'd just run three miles. Even here, exposed on one of Atlantis' great arms, Ronon blended into his surroundings, taking on the characteristics of his environment, and John realized for the first time that Ronon always wore a mottled grey shirt when they ran the outer loop of Atlantis' piers and balconies.

 _Camouflage_ , John realized, slowing further as Ronon neared the end of the pier. He played a game with himself to predict the moment when Ronon would have to turn and was therefore watching the spot Ronon had been occupying when he disappeared suddenly from view.

John swallowed a surprised shout, kicked into a full run, arms pumping, breath coming in pants, trying to cover the ground more quickly.

 _He can swim_ , John said to himself, frantically trying to remember if he knew that for sure about Ronon. _I'm sure he can swim._ He spared a glance to the left, over the edge of the pier's waist-high railing, and saw a drop of some twenty feet. _But he can't fly_ , John thought grimly, willing himself to run harder, faster.

Finally, he came to the spot where he thought Ronon had disappeared. Legs shaking with fatigue, heart pounding with a sickening mix of adrenaline and exertion, he approached the edge of the pier and peered carefully over, not sure what had taken the big man over the edge here, where there was a gap in the railing presumably used to move people and objects from ship to shore.

"Son of a bitch!" he said in wonder, looking down in disbelief at Ronon, who was standing fifteen feet or so below him on some kind of floating platform that looked suspiciously like bass boat, sans the outboard and the navigational systems.

Ronon was giving John a proprietary grin, standing with arms akimbo, legs apart, like some latter-day pirate. "Like it?" he asked.

"What is it, exactly?" John rejoined. "And how long have you known about it?"

Ronon shrugged loosely, smile widening. He was visibly pleased with John's reaction to his little surprise.

"I think it's some kind of boat," Ronon said. "I can't make it work, but I figured you might. And I found it yesterday, floating a mile or so off the pier, while I was running."

"You found it a mile out in the water? How'd you get it here?"

Ronon shrugged again, used his chin to indicate a tow cable attached to the boat's bow.

"You pulled it in by hand?" John's voice reflected the astonishment he felt. Well, he can swim.

"It wasn't hard," and the big man shrugged a third time, obviously pleased with how effective his ploy had been even while voicing his modest disclaimer.

Spotting the ladder that Ronon must have skipped in the haste of his descent— _show off_ , John groused inwardly—John climbed down and set foot gingerly on the boat's deck. Immediately, he felt a hum beneath his feet and heard the familiar hush of mystery hydraulics, these bringing into view a console in the fore of the boat.

Predictably, the console came alive under John's hands, and though his command of Ancient was still fairly limited, he knew enough of guidance and navigational systems from the 'jumpers to be able to operate the boat.

"Want to find out if she's seaworthy?" There was in John's voice a gleeful eagerness to match Ronon's own grin, and he didn't wait for the Satedan to answer before commanding the vessel to power up—slowly—and move away from the pier.

"Shouldn't we let Weir know what we're doing?" Ronon asked, and John was ashamed to admit that he'd forgotten all about Atlantis' civilian commander...or about anyone else on Atlantis, for that matter.

John shrugged; sometimes he did that, too. "You want to run all the way back to the city, find a working comm. link, and call in?"

"No, but don't blame me if we end up having to swim back to the city or something because no one knows where we are to come rescue us."

John laughed. "You're definitely adapting to life on Atlantis. You're starting to sound like McKay."

Ronon gave a little grunt and tossed his head. "You going to get this thing moving, or what?"

"We'll just take her for a test run, keep it nice and close to the city, maybe head toward the observation deck off of the atrium and see if we can dock her below there. I'm sure Elizabeth would like to get a look at this, and you know McKay's going to be mad as all hell that Zelenka got to it first."

They shared a laugh at the Chief Scientist's expense and then fell into a steady and comfortable silence. The boat moved easily over the sea, not even bouncing on the rough chop of the waves washing back from the city's sides.

"Must be some kind of compensatory system like the inertial dampeners on the 'jumpers," John noted.

Ronon made a noncommittal noise. He left the science to the scientists.

"I think there's an autopilot," John said admiringly, taking his hands away from the yoke that had risen from the console when he'd first touched it.

The boat moved at the same steady pace, a careful twelve feet from the city's sides. "I wonder if there's sonar or something like—" A three-dimensional holograph appeared, bright green dots showing objects below the surface of the sea.

"Awesome," John drawled, watching the shifting shapes of what could only be the same marine creature that had taken such an interest in McKay's submerged jumper only days before. He assumed that there was some kind of audible warning system should they be in danger of hitting a submerged object—or leviathan--so he turned his attention from the console long enough to get a good look at Ronon's face.

The Satedan was looking a little green at the gills, lips a tight line, eyes half-closed against the glare of the sun on the water. His arms were crossed, legs spread in a defensive stance, muscles tense. He looked miserable.

"I guess you didn't do much boating in Locris, huh?" John remembered their first real conversation, all those months ago, when Ronon had talked about the seaside village to which he and his mother would sometimes travel when Ronon was a child.

Ronon shook his head. "Mostly fished, swam. We couldn't afford to rent a boat." The words were squeezed out between his teeth, apparently clenched against the urge to vomit, an urge that won only moments later, when Ronon moved swiftly to the boat's side and heaved noisily.

"We're not really rocking very much," John observed, thinking that it might all be in Ronon's head.

Ronon gave him a leveling look and John held up his hands placatingly. "Sorry," he said, turning back to the sonar display, knowing that Ronon wouldn't appreciate his help in this particular case.

The big man moved up beside him a few minutes later, still looking a little pale.

"Feeling better?"

"Yeah. I think it's passed."

"Good," John said. "You want to try taking her out a little further, maybe open her up?"

Ronon's answering smile didn't escape John's notice; the Satedan liked speed as much as John did, a fact he'd divined the first time they'd been alone together in a 'jumper for the mainland and Ronon had said, "So, this as fast as this thing can go?"

"Thought we were playing it safe for this first trip," Ronon said wryly, smirk firmly in place on his full lips.

"We-ell," John drawled, not bothering to provide further justification. They were both grinning like idiots, anyway.

As it turned out, the boat was not designed for speed. The faster they went, the rougher it got, until waves were breaking on the bounce up over the prow and spraying them with salt water. John was grinning into the wetness, letting out the occasional boyish shout when the water would strike them, but when Ronon leaned into the console, head down, John thought, _He looks like he needs to sit down._ Chairs appeared conveniently from the deck of the boat, and Ronon sank into one silently, clutching the arms for support.

John slowed the boat, made a wide, gentle arc, and headed back for Atlantis, which had fallen behind them by an alarming distance without his even realizing it. He shook his head at his own negligence and said, "You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Sorry about that. I didn't think it would get quite so rough."

The only answer was Ronon's sudden motion as he bolted from his seat and headed for the starboard side once more.

John kept the boat to a studiously sedate pace on the way back to the city, and by the time they made it to the wall below the observation deck off of the main control room, Ronon's color had returned.

With Elizabeth's suitably impressed response to his find, Ronon even blushed a little. John had noticed that classy women had that effect on Ronon. Teyla he was fine with, figuring if he could throw her around, she must be like him. But Elizabeth was different, and though he took her orders well enough, Ronon was never wholly comfortable, preferring to sit silent and watchful unless she spoke to him directly.

Now, he nodded once, awkwardly, and John felt a tightness in the region of his heart, for like this—abashed and a little uncertain—Ronon looked young, and it made John sad to think of all the years he'd lost running from the Wraith, outside of human contact, utterly isolated. He had to resist a nearly physical urge to touch the other man, to assure him that he was not alone.

Once the initial excitement of Ronon's discovery had died down to a productive murmur, Zelenka already having dispatched a crew of technicians to take initial readings on the boat, John and Ronon excused themselves, ostensibly to continue their interrupted workout by going a few rounds in the gym.

Of course, they had actually no intention of throwing each other around in public.

They had hardly cleared the doors to their room when Ronon pushed John into the wall and claimed the colonel's mouth in one of those focused kisses the Satedan was so good at.

"Mmmmm," Ronon growled, "Salty" as he left John's lips to lave a path down his jaw to his throat. John threw his head back with a groan, threaded his fingers through Ronon's thick hair, closed his eyes and gave in to the sensation of Ronon's busy tongue and nipping teeth. The contrast of soft tongue and scratchy beard made John shiver, and he sucked in a sudden breath.

"Your mouth is so hot," he moaned on the exhale, opening his eyes to look down at Ronon, who was now on his knees, having worked John's shirt up so that he could lick the long line of hair arrowing down from John's chest to his navel.

Ronon glanced up through his long, long lashes, and John caught a feral flash just before Ronon sank his teeth into the lean line of muscle just above John's waistband.

"God, Ronon," John cried, tightening his fingers to pull the man's head away. He was already panting, already hard, so full of want that he could barely breathe around it, and he hadn't even taken off his clothes. "Slow down. We have all night."

"Sorry," Ronon said softly, standing up so abruptly that John had to release the man's hair or risk hurting him.

"Hey," John said as Ronon turned and moved away from him, deeper into the late afternoon shadows that softened the edges of the ancient equipment, making the familiar objects more alien than they had ever been before. He wasn't used to viewing the room in daylight.

"Hey," John said again, following the other man, reaching out to touch his arm, turn him so that he could see Ronon's face. "I didn't mean we had to stop. I liked it. I just figured we had a little more time than usual to savor the moment, you know?"

"I wasn't stopping," Ronon said. "I was just moving us to someplace more comfortable."

And that's when John saw the shape on the floor behind the Ancient console, a shape suspiciously mattress-like and draped in what must be Athosian blankets, judging from the bright colors that bled their light even into the dusk-veiled room.

"Well, you're just full of surprises today, aren't you?" John teased, trying to keep things light when in truth his heart was tripping madly, fear and desire warring for ascendancy. Unfortunately, fear got to his tongue first.

"You know you can't keep this here, right? In-depth exploration for this part of the city is scheduled to begin next week." It was one of the reasons John had suggested that they spend their free evening here, since it might be the last time they could use the room at all, once its purpose was discovered. John had made a point of never touching the console in the center of the room for fear of activating it and thereby bringing it to McKay's attention, but once a team of scientists had intruded into the space, it would no longer belong to John and Ronon, even were the console to prove useless.

"I know," and there was a surety there that unsettled John further.

"Well, okay then. Uh...what are you going to do with it when we're.... After, I mean."

"Give it back to McKay. He's the one who loaned it to me from the storeroom."

John wasn't sure he had heard Ronon right until he looked hard at the bigger man's face, swathed as it was with darkness now. The look there did nothing to forestall the icy fingers making inroads into his belly, for on Ronon's face was a distinct expression of challenge.

"McKay knows?" It wasn't really a question, and John's voice had the silk-over-steel tone he took on in dangerous situations, when the stakes were high and lives might hang in the balance.

"He suspected when you fell through the portal. Said my reaction was 'all out of proportion to the circumstance.'"

"What did he mean?" And John's voice was no less menacing, quiet though it was.

Ronon shrugged. "I threatened him?"

"How is that different from every other mission we've been on?"

"I might've been a little more...vigorous. But he knew for sure when he saw you kiss me on level three during the bomb scare last week."

John nodded tightly, kept his head down as he thought his way ruthlessly through the permutations. McKay was a gossip, but he was also pretty loyal, and John had a hard time figuring that the physicist would betray them to Caldwell—Rodney'd always had a degree of disdain for the U.S. military, after all.

 _But he might tell Elizabeth._ John couldn't say why it bothered him to think that Elizabeth might know. Maybe because she'd be hurt that he hadn't told her himself. Or possibly because he had sometimes thought she had ideas along the same lines. He shook his head, trying to clear it of extraneous information. _Just the facts, Sheppard,_ he told himself.

"Relax, Sheppard. McKay's not going to tell anyone."

John gave Ronon a searching look, bringing the lights up to a dim glow with a thought. "And how do you know that?"

"Because I told him that if he betrayed you, he'd never be able to take another bite of food without having to search it for citrus."

Despite the gravity of the situation, John couldn't help the snort of laughter that followed Ronon's matter-of-fact proclamation. "And he believed you?"

Ronon gave a kind of half-shrug, sheepishly. "I might have told him about the seventy-three varieties of citrus-like fruits I learned to recognize as a runner."

"And...?" John prompted, sensing there was more.

"And about the half-year I spent as my platoon's cook when the old one died of dysentery."

John winced. "That's an unfortunate way for a cook to die, isn't it?"

"We didn't think so."

John's bark of laughter at that took them both by surprise, broke the tension enough that the ensuing silence was almost comfortable.

Finally, Ronon shifted his weight and said, in a voice so quiet that John had to hold his breath to hear every word:

"Kell used to tell us that for a warrior, forever is a foolish dream. I'm no fool. I know it's not forever. Hell, after tonight it might be never again. So let's just—"

"Why 'never again'?" John's voice was soft and searching.

"Where?" was all Ronon said, but John knew what he meant. Where would they go when their home had been violated by others, people alien to the life they'd made in its small space?

"Home is where you hang your heart," John said, grimacing even as the platitude left his lips, unsure of what had made him quote the plaque his mother kept in the front hall of their home. No matter where they had lived, that sign was always there, kitschy pastel colors, country house with quilted windows, cat on the stoop, sunflowers at the fence, and that phrase arching over it all like some demented Polyanna had hired a skywriter to declare her heart.

Ronon's eyebrow quirked in inquiry, and then he said, "I hope that's one of those old Earth sayings of yours. Otherwise, it's kind of disturbing."

John laughed again, realizing that from Ronon's rather literal viewpoint, his mother's favorite phrase was, at best, macabre.

"It is. It means—"

"I get it," Ronon interrupted, moving toward John, hands reaching out to bracket the smaller man's shoulders in comforting parentheses. John brought his hands up to wrap around Ronon's wrists, and they stood there for a long time, just looking, until John had begun to unconsciously match his breathing to Ronon's slow inhalations.

Whatever wordless declaration passed between them, its passing was marked by a mutual sigh, as of submission to something higher than themselves, and then they were both in motion, moving together, lips and hips and pressing thighs, and there were muted murmurs as their mouths met, sealing their understanding in a bond they recognized without having to name it.

Ronon's hands moved to John's face, cupping him from chin to temple, and the heat of those hands made John moan a little into Ronon's mouth, brought his own hands up to thread once more through Ronon's lush hair. Ronon's tongue moved smoothly against John's own, licked along the roof , at the inside of his lips, at the corners of his hungry mouth, and John moaned again, louder this time, and pressed closer, hands roaming now down Ronon's arms, feeling the flex of muscles beneath his fingers, the power of the hands that held him still so that Ronon could suck his lower lip into his mouth, nipping it until John thrust his hips hard against the bigger man and began to grind.

This time it was Ronon who pulled away, Ronon who whispered, "Slow down."

John's breath was coming in harsh gusts, like he'd been trying to outrun the Satedan, and he looked up into Ronon's eyes, drowning deep in the dim light, eyes that were fixed on John's mouth.

"What?" he asked, raggedly, and Ronon came back to himself with a little laugh, growling out, "Your mouth looks well-fucked."

"I think that can be arranged," John responded, voice drawling down the register, eyes following his thoughts downward to the obvious evidence of Ronon's arousal.

"That's not what I meant," Ronon began, but John stopped him. "I know. But it's what I want," and John suited action to words by working open Ronon's belt and then at the fastening of his leather pants.

"Commando," John observed, grin evident in his voice even as he bent forward to lick a line along Ronon's belly.

Ronon groaned, whispered a word in the language he used when English betrayed him, and John smiled, skimming his hands down Ronon's hips, sliding the pants down and around his jutting flesh. John leaned forward again, this time ghosting his breath over Ronon's hard shaft, letting his tongue dart out and tickle the tip of it, catching a trace of fluid and the heady odor of Ronon—leather and sweat and sex—at once.

Ronon groaned again, louder, and helped John's hands skim the pants down until John knelt at his feet and helped him out of his boots, pausing in his efforts to nip Ronon's inner thigh or leave a wet trail along the back of his knee or a gentle kiss on his ankle bone.

Ronon was half-naked and all need when John stood up again, taking Ronon's shaft in his hot hand and squeezing, gently, saying, "Take your shirt off and lie down" even as he stepped back and proceeded to strip with military efficiency.

Ronon did as he was told, stretching languidly on the mattress with a fluid motion that flexed everything in one long arc, and John said "Slut" fondly as he crawled up the bed, pushing Ronon's knees wide and aside so that he could climb between them, until his hot mouth hovered over Ronon's long shaft.

"John," Ronon whispered, and it was as close to begging as John had ever heard from a man who didn't break even in the face of fearsome and fickle death.

John laved a path down the underside of Ronon's member, leaving a wet line that glistened in the Atlantis' half light. He blew cold breath back up the shaft to the tip, which he wrapped his lips around like a seal and suckled hard.

Ronon's hips bowed up off of the bed as words broke from him in a foreign tongue. John didn't need a translator, knowing Ronon as he did, and he slid down, swallowing the other man, until he was all around Ronon, until Ronon filled his mouth with heat and aching need.

Ronon's hand was in his hair, clenching and releasing in time with John's motions, and the feel of Ronon's long fingers against the back of his skull made John shudder.

When Ronon started to ride his mouth, John let him, bracing his hands on either side of Ronon's thrusting hips and sucking hard, rubbing himself off against the blanket beneath him, humming his pleasure around the wet flesh and then moaning again as the bigger man started to arch and shout, coming in a hot stream, John swallowing the seed, feeling his own member twitch.

Harsh pants and heavy breathing and the heady scent of sex filled the air around them as Ronon struggled to regain control.

When he had air enough to form words, they were, "Fuck me," and John answered by laying his slender length along Ronon's own, enough to look down into his eyes.

"No," John said simply, gaze giving nothing away.

"If you want me to return the favor, you're going to have to turn around," Ronon tried, smirking.

John just shook his head.

Ronon considered him, smirk fading, until finally, "Tell me what you want, John," words colored by a cautious hope.

"I want you to fuck me, Ronon," John said, eyes never wavering from Ronon's own. He saw the moment when Ronon realized what he'd said, felt it as the man beneath him stilled, watched the careful way light crept into his eyes, curled his mouth up at the corners.

"You sure," was all he said, but his hands had already heard the unspoken answer, coming up to cup John's buttocks, sliding him forward just that small bit more so that John's hard shaft was sliding against Ronon's interested own. John spread his legs in a shallow straddle, threw his head back, exposing his throat to Ronon, who leaned up and took the bobbing prize in his teeth, biting gently until John growled and Ronon felt it through his teeth and tongue.

"No marks," John breathed, coming in for a fierce kiss, all teeth and questing tongue, and then he began to grind harder, Ronon's hands still holding him, helping his hips in their rhythmic rise and fall until the motions became jerky and frantic, until John started grunting in time with the thrusts, and Ronon whispered, "Yes" into John's ear, and John cried out and came, hot seed splashing Ronon's belly, coating Ronon's own, no longer flaccid member.

Ronon didn't gentle John down but rolled him, raising himself up on his arms even as his hips caught the rhythm John's had dropped, sliding in the slick mess John had left until he was coated.

John drew his knees up, spread them wide, held them in his hands, and Ronon slid a hand across his own wet belly and then across John's, gathering wetness as he went, finally sliding two fingers down the crevice of John's body, stopping to fondle his balls, to tease that sensitive flesh behind them.

John gasped, said, "Ronon" in a way that made the bigger man growl deep in his throat, and he moved his hand lower, circling the tight opening once, twice, wetting it and watching John, who looked back at Ronon, breathless and needing, saying "God Ronon, do it, please, do it," and Ronon slid a finger in, feeling the resistance and then the give, grinding out, "You're tight," even as he slid a second finger in.

He found the spot with his long fingers, found it and rubbed it, and John shouted, shoulders curling up off the mattress, eyes wide and wild. "Now, Ronon, God now, Ronon, please," and then the fingers were gone and he felt Ronon shift, felt a blunt nudge and then a burning, and then he was full, so full, and he thought he might scream, and then he did as Ronon seated himself, slid all the way home, and the heavy weight of him settled against John, inside of him, and he thought he might have stopped breathing.

"Alright?" Ronon asked, voice tight with the strain of staying still. "Is this okay, John?"

And John opened his eyes to see Ronon's face only inches from his own, to see those eyes dark with desire, brow creased with concern.

"Better than okay, Ronon," John whispered, cleared his throat. "Please," he breathed brokenly, and Ronon moved, worry giving way to wildness as they were caught up and carried by the sensation of filled and filling.

Ronon rocked, and John cried out, feeling himself harden again, feeling the friction of Ronon inside of him, the heat and completeness of it, and then a big hand was wrapping around him, and he was trying to throw himself open further, trying to feel everything at once: Ronon's hand on him, Ronon's hardness inside him. John threw his head back against the bed, gritted his teeth against the scream and then gave way, let it out as the wave caught him, ripped through him, tore him open: he shrieked, and Ronon shouted, and then he was overcome with a kind of radiant white buzz, heat inside and out, wetness, and then nothing for a long, long moment.

When he came to himself again, he saw Ronon still above him, looking down at him with an expression so proprietary and self-satisfied that he was once again reminded of a pirate who had claimed his prize. It made him shiver.

"Cold?" Ronon asked, finally moving off of John to lay on his side, facing the other man, and wrap a long arm around John's chest.

"No," John answered, voice hushed with the weight of his feelings.

"That was..." Ronon began, falling into their usual formula for post-coital moments.

"That was amazing, Ronon," John responded, breaking the pattern of their previous encounters. John reached up to run his hand along the other man's face, tracing his lower lip with his thumb. "And I want to do it again."

"Now?" Ronon asked, voice rising an octave in surprise.

John laughed, a soft chuff of sound in the quiet room. "Maybe not _right_ now. I meant—"

"I know what you meant," Ronon said. "So do I."

"Well, that's settled. All we have to do now is find another room."

"Shouldn't be hard," Ronon said. "We've got two of them."

John stopped his hand, which had been tracing patterns over Ronon's smooth chest absently. He spread his fingers wide, feeling the heart beating beneath them. What he felt there was more than flesh, he knew, and suddenly he remembered his mother's corny plaque again and knew that there was only once answer his own heart could take.

"Okay," he said, finally, feeling at his words Ronon's great heart leap beneath his hand.

"We'll be careful," Ronon promised, anticipating John's fear.

"I don't care," John answered, surprised to find that he meant it. "In fact, I think we should tell Elizabeth, and maybe Beckett. And I think we should do it tonight."

"You don't have to—"

"Yes, I do," John insisted, conviction clear in his voice. "Atlantis is our home now, Ronon—ours together. And we shouldn't have to hide in our own home."

"What about Caldwell?" Ronon asked, and there was in his tone a dangerous lilt that John found endearing. The big man didn't like the captain of the Daedalus any more than John did.

"Caldwell won't ask."

"And if he does?" Ronon prompted, face grave.

John shrugged elaborately. "I hear he's allergic to nuts."

A wicked laugh was the only answer.

  
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.wraithbait.com/viewstory.php?sid=5540>  



	8. Home of the Brave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are major spoilers for Season Two's _The Long Goodbye_ herein, as this story takes place immediately after the events that occur during the episode. I want to take this opportunity to thank my readers, who have been very patient in waiting for this chapter.

"Well, see, it's about this battle that happened a long time ago between my country—the United States—and its opposition, Great Britain."

"So it's a victory song..."

"Well," John drawled, stalling for time while he struggled to find a simple way to explain the stalemate that was the War of 1812—source of America's national anthem—without making them all sound kind of lame.

He had nothing.

"You lost, and still you chose it for your victory song?"

"It's not a victory song," John said, trying not to let any of his irritation leak into his voice; after all, it wasn't Ronon's fault that he didn't understand the context for the War of 1812. "It's a national anthem. It's like our...our theme. You know, it represents all the values we hold most dear as a people. And we didn't lose. We just...knew when to quit while we were ahead."

 _Well, thank god that wasn't lame,_ John scoffed internally. _And who gave me a patriotism booster when I wasn't looking?_

"So how does it go?"

John snorted. "No way. I'm not singing it, so you can just forget it."

"You don't have to sing it," Ronon said, but there was a gloating laugh in the back of his throat that let John know how much the idea amused the Satedan. "Just tell me the words."

"Okay, but it's kinda long."

Ronon shrugged, then winced as the motion pulled his stitches uncomfortably. John wondered if Ronon would have to resort to actually speaking in place of the ubiquitous gesture and then sobered, remembering why it was that Ronon had stitches to begin with. There wasn't anything funny about what had happened to Ronon.

Of course, John pretended he hadn't seen Ronon's discomfort, instead distracting himself by staring fixedly at the ceiling as he struggled to remember the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner" without having to sing it. He found it was harder than he thought. Finally, though, he got it. "Okay...it goes like this:

Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light,  
What so proudly we hailed, by the twilight's last gleaming.  
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,  
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.  
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,  
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.  
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,  
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"

"So the whole song's about a flag?" His skepticism could be peeled off and eaten, so thick was it.

"Well, no. There are other verses about...other stuff."

"Like what?"

"Uh..., stuff, you know, war stuff. The battle and courage and the cost of victory. The usual."

In fact, John had had to learn every verse by heart while in the Academy—had had to sing every damned verse while running punitive laps in the Quad...in the rain...carrying a practice rifle on occasions too numerous to count. He had never been good at taking orders from someone whose motives he suspected. An image of Caldwell's snake-infested eyes came into his head and as quickly as it flashed there it was replaced by the memory of his own consciousness trying to scream and claw its way out of his brain as Thalan took casually and expertly aimed shots at the thing wearing Elizabeth's body.

He shook his head once to clear it.

"You okay?" Ronon asked, something lurking behind his casual tone.

"Yeah, I'm fine," John lied. "Just tired."

"You should go get some sleep."

John considered Ronon's expression, saw there the indifference that masked so much of what the man actually felt, saw something warmer in his eyes than what was safe, even with the privacy screen.

 _Need_ , John thought. He knew Ronon would never say, "Stay."

John was once again—for the nth time that day—grateful that they'd told Elizabeth and Beckett. It made it easier to explain his being here in the middle of the night, made Beckett's breezy explanation for the privacy screen—Ronon was an irritable and uncooperative patient—trip easily off the doctor's quick tongue.

"Nah, I'm okay," he said then. Something in Ronon's posture relaxed infinitesimally. "How'd we get on this topic again, anyway?"

"You were telling me about the best football game you ever saw."

"Oh, right, right. So after Whitney finishes singing the national anthem—."

"I'm alright, you know." Ronon's voice was deep and low, and as it always did, it went straight to John's belly, warming him. He shifted in his chair, glanced around the perimeter of the privacy screen, seeing only the bent figure of a nurse at the far end of the infirmary, tending to a patient whose identity he didn't even know. He was suddenly ashamed. _Some military commander you are._

"We're alone," Ronon said, voice still a growl above a whisper.

 _Of course he knows that_ , John thought, still amazed by the skills Ronon had honed while being hunted. _He probably knows who's in that hospital bed, too._

John turned his eyes back to Ronon. "Teyla came by while you were still asleep."

"She knows." It was not a question.

"Well, you know Teyla. She didn't say it in so many words, just gave that enigmatic smile of hers. She asked me to tell you that she hopes you are well and that she'll be by tomorrow."

"She knows," Ronon repeated, a warm humor in his voice. They were a team; they knew each other like that. John smiled.

"I hear you kissed Weir."

John tried not to show his surprise, but he couldn't help the way he shifted back in his seat a little, attempting casual even while his muscles tensed and his pulse jumped at his throat. The smile had faded to a sickly whiteness around the edges of his tightened lips.

"News travels fast," he said, hoping he could ride it out on bluff.

"It's okay. I know that you weren't yourself. And she probably wasn't, either."

John narrowed his eyes and sat up straight, arms on his knees, leaning forward toward the bed and Ronon's implacable gaze. "What do you mean 'probably'?" The air was harder to breathe, laden with sudden tension, as just before a storm that sweeps in off the sea.

"Relax, Sheppard," Ronon said, giving a little laugh, one that didn't pull at his recent wound. "I only meant that there have been times when Elizabeth's probably wanted to shoot me but couldn't. Phoebus just gave her an opening. Hell, I don't blame her."

"Elizabeth didn't mean to shoot you, Ronon, any more than I meant to kiss her. We weren't in control. You do understand that." There was an urgency in John's tone that made something in Ronon's eyes shift and darken. His next words were harder, no longer colored by even a hint of humor.

"I know that you weren't, John. But I'm not so sure that Elizabeth was entirely under Phoebus' control when she kissed you. I've seen the way she looks at you—hungry."

John tried to laugh, but there seemed to be a cold hand wrapped around his heart, and he couldn't do more than blow out a fast, hard sound of dismissal.

"You're wrong, Ronon. Phoebus had total control from the moment Elizabeth regained consciousness. It was the same for me with Thalan. Believe me, if I could have shut him up, I would have."

He was thinking of Thalan's not-so-subtle insinuations about John's feelings for Teyla and how he'd hoped to god that Teyla would find the strength to pull the trigger rather than let the bastard keep talking. He wasn't sure how much of those insidious sounds he could have stood to hear spilling from his own lips.

Ronon shook his head slowly, decisively, and pinned John with a look the colonel was sure he'd never seen there before. It matched his next words.

"Elizabeth wants you, John. She fights it, but it's always there when she looks at you, the way she watches you. She has it under control most of the time, hides it behind that cool mask she wears for the world, but Phoebus gave Weir's hunger the reins and it rode her. You had to have known it when she kissed you, just like I knew it when she shot me."

"Look," John said, his voice too loud. He leaned around the screen again to see the nurse's nervous eyes on him. He gave her a nod and a smile he dredged up from some other lifetime, the lifetime before this conversation started, and she went back to whatever it was she was doing at the duty desk.

"Look," and this time it was regulated, under control, "Elizabeth is sorry she shot you, Ronon. You heard her when she came here earlier. You saw her face. She didn't mean to shoot you; she didn't shoot you, in point of fact—Phoebus did."

But even as he said the words, John realized that he was wrong. There were moments near the end, when Thalan's control had started to slip, when John wrested control from Thalan: not enough to shut him up, nor even to keep him still, but certainly enough that he could have stopped Thalan from strangling Teyla, for example, had such a circumstance arisen.

_But maybe Phoebus was stronger or more committed. Thalan seemed to think she was crazy; crazy people are usually unnaturally strong._

The rationalization was doing nothing for the cold needles piercing John's gut, however, for he was remembering now the way Elizabeth looked when she first woke up in the infirmary bed next to John's, in those very first seconds of consciousness, when it was just she and John, eyes locked. He was remembering the smile on her face, the warmth there, and something else...something inappropriate for a friend, even a good friend, something proprietary in more than an I'm-your-boss-and-I'm-glad-you're-okay kind of way.

 _Oh, shit,_ John thought, and then realized he'd breathed it aloud. He brought his eyes back from their blind wandering to fix on Ronon's face. The Satedan had the patient expectancy of someone about to be proved right.

"Okay, maybe you're right. But I don't think Elizabeth knows it, Ronon. I don't think she consciously chose to shoot you. Maybe there was something in her that weakened her otherwise unquestionable moral standard, something Phoebus took advantage of. But I don't think that Elizabeth would shoot you under normal circumstances."

"When are circumstances ever normal around here, Sheppard?" And Ronon's use of his last name warned John that the big man wasn't going to let him skate on technicalities. He slumped in his seat, exhaustion replacing his usual ease of posture.

"You know what I mean. She isn't going to start taking potshots at you in the mess."

"No, but she's ultimately in charge of missions."

John repressed a shudder, trying not to remember the assholes he'd flown under who had let their prejudices make their decisions for them.

"No, Ronon. Elizabeth isn't like that. She's not Kell. She's not going to use you like that, not even if she's jealous, and I'm not entirely convinced that's the case. Besides, I'm the one who makes the final determinations for military personnel, not Elizabeth, and you're on my team."

"Okay," Ronon said, and he meant it.

John saw that the Satedan was satisfied. He shook his head, made a noise somewhere between disbelief and disgust. "Is it really that simple for you?"

"I told you a long time ago, John—you draw the line, and I'll toe it. You say Weir's okay, then she's okay. I trust your judgment. I trust _you_."

And just like that, John got it, and for a moment he was not sure he could inhale for the fear that had crawled up his belly and into his throat, driving his heart ahead of it and choking off his air. His eyes filled, and he was afraid that he was going to cry, and he hated that it was his second response—after fear—because it seemed like when you finally get something like this, you should be happy, or at least not terrified or tearful, and Ronon deserved more than this cowardice.

And then John felt the faintest hint of pressure at his cheek, and he realized that Ronon had touched him, brushing away a tear he hadn't known was falling, and then it was okay, because he had his courage in both hands now, both hands wrapped desperately around Ronon's reaching one, and John is saying, "I love you" in a low voice, wrought—overwrought—with months of wanting and needing and knowing and fearing. "I love you. I love you. I love you," over and over again, a mantra, a prayer, that he can hold Ronon's hand, that it's not slick with blood, or stiff with the coldness of death, or limp in the limbo of coma.

"Hey," Ronon said, his voice only a hoarse sibilance, an exhaled breath, but John heard it, looked up, no longer afraid, not of the feeling nor the tears nor the expression on Ronon's face, which was as pure and real as anything John had ever seen. "It's okay. I'm here."

John waited, not daring to breathe, heedless of the wet trail of the few tears that had dared to fall, eyes bright with love and hope, and then he exhaled as he heard the whisper, the three words that Ronon had also never said out loud before.

"I love you."

And John kissed Ronon's hand, and then he laughed wetly against it at how sappy this must look, like a scene from some made-for-tv movie, and he doesn't care, doesn't care that the duty nurse might see them, nor that he never thought to ask who was in that other hospital bed.

"What's so funny?" Ronon asked, bemused.

"Nothing," John answered, looking up from their clasped hands, loosening his grip a little, running his finger over the back of Ronon's hand, down each of his long, long fingers in turn, until Ronon growls low from the back of his throat, "You'd better stop that unless you're prepared to follow through."

"When did the doc say you were getting out of here?"

"Two days, if there's no infection."

"Too bad," John said, drawing the words out even as he lowered his lips once more to Ronon's hand, this time to dart his tongue out and over the crease between Ronon's thumb and finger, gratified to hear Ronon's quick indrawn breath.

"Sheppard," and it's a warning growl. John's teeth join the play, biting, holding the thin skin there, and then it's "John," barely audible, just a plea, and John stops, looking up at his lover from beneath his lashes, giving him all his teeth now in a wolfish grin.

"Two days, Ronon. Doctor's orders."

"And what are your orders?" Ronon teased, voice doing things to John's lower regions that made him shift in his seat and sigh.

"They involve a lot of bed rest."

Ronon's low laughter is the incarnation of indecency, and John thinks that he needs to hear it a lot more often as he settles once more back in his chair, prepared to stay the whole night through.

"So, as I was saying, Whitney finishes the national anthem, and..."

FIN.

  
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.wraithbait.com/viewstory.php?sid=5540>  



End file.
